The replicability crisis as chance for psychological research and South African Journal of Industrial Psychology

SA Journal of Industrial Psychology ISSN: (Online) 2071-0763, (Print) 0258-5200 Page 1 of 3 Opinion Paper The replicability crisis as chance for psychological research and South African Journal of Industrial Psychology Author: Alina S. Hernandez Bark1 Problemification: This article identifies the drivers of and solutions to the replicability crisis for psychological science and the South African Journal of Industrial Psychology (SAJIP). Affiliation: 1 Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Sport Science, Institute of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Implications: The article addresses and discusses possible starting points to tackle the recent replicability crisis and convert it into a chance for psychological research and the SAJIP. Corresponding author: Alina S. Hernandez Bark, HernandezBark@psych. uni-frankfurt.de Recommendations: The article provides recommendation on how to change SAJIP’s policies to increase international visibility. Dates: Received: 31 July 2019 Accepted: 16 Nov. 2019 Published: 13 Dec. 2019 How to cite this article: Hernandez Bark, A.S. (2019). The replicability crisis as chance for psychological research and South African Journal of Industrial Psychology. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology/SA Tydskrif vir Bedryfsielkunde, 45(0), a1724. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/sajip.v45i0.1724 Copyright: © 2019. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Read online: Scan this QR code with your smart phone or mobile device to read online. Purpose: To combine a discussion about the replicability crisis and how it could improve psychological research standards and journal policies. Keywords: Replication crisis; Open science practices; Open science; Reproducibility crisis; Psychological research. In this article, I will focus on and explain how the current replicability crisis in psychology can also be a chance for psychological research and, further, how it can be converted into a chance for the South African Journal of Industrial Psychology (SAJIP). Therefore, I will briefly provide readers with knowledge about my scientific background as it might be influencing my perspective on the replicability crisis. Furthermore, I will describe in what ways the crisis might even benefit SAJIP and how this conversion can be succeeded. As my research is located at the intersection of social and organisational psychology, I am an active member in both communities and familiar with the ongoing debate about replicability in both fields, especially in the European context. From my perspective, both sub-disciplines and especially corresponding journals handle questions and concerns regarding replicability quite differently. After the investigations against Diederik Stapel, former professor of social psychology at Tilburg University, who manipulated and even created fictive data in his publications, the question of how to conduct good research and reduce the likelihood of fraudulence was very prominent in the psychological research, and researchers developed ideas on how research policies could be improved (Nosek et al., 2015). As a result, there have been several replication studies (Camerer et al., 2018), and a shift towards more transparency in conducting and publishing research has already been started (Van’t Veer & Giner-Sorolla, 2016). Thus, using the Open Science Framework (OSF), pre-registering studies and experiments, preprint publications and sharing the data or at least making data publicly available is nowadays common in the social psychology sector. Hence, questions like transparency of the research process, open access publications, pre-publications of manuscripts and the aim for reproducibility, replicability and equality are salient and prominent. In line with these developments, almost all social psychological journals have changed their policies correspondingly. However, in my experience, these questions are not so prominent in the organisational and business psychology sector. Although, there has been some discussion, debates and changes in some journal policies, in general, the scientific work in the organisational and business psychology sector has not changed as much as it is in the social psychology sector, and discussions about replication studies in organisational studies have just started (Köhler & Cortina, 2019). All the more, I appreciate the recent article by Efendic and Van Zyl (2019) in SAJIP about this topic. In my opinion, the authors summarise very well several factors that contributed to the existing replicability crisis, and further outline some solutions regarding how to overcome critical aspects contributing to the crisis. http://www.sajip.co.za Open Access Page 2 of 3 I completely agree with the aspects stated by Efendic and Van Zyl (2019) of (1) statistical power and small sample sizes, (2) publication bias, (3) existing research practices and publication pressure, (4) existing incentive systems in academia and (5) lack of transparency as main drivers of the current crisis. Furthermore, like the authors, I think that power analyses, pre-registration of research and transparency regarding both data and statistical analyses are essential for avoiding fraudulence. From my perspective, establishing policies and guidelines for authors, which include these aspects and which value that researchers commit themselves to these research guidelines, would benefit the whole field of psychological research and should become common in all psychological sub-disciplines. An additional aspect that is not mentioned in Efendic and Van Zyl’s (2019) article is the fairness component. By fairness I mean that individuals and especially researchers all over the world – independent of the country or university they are studying or working at – should have access to state-of-the-art literature that is relevant for their own research, work or interest. This problem of no access without paying for the content of an article is referred to as pay gap1, and a further argument why authors and institutions should favour open access publications. However, based on the same argument, psychological associations in the national and international levels (e.g. American Psychology Association [APA], Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology [SIOP], and European Association of Work and Organizational Psychology [EAWOP]) should create funds where researchers who work under such conditions that do not allow them to pay for open access publications can apply for financial support for open access publications. Thus, in several aspects, the recent crisis has impacted and is still impacting psychological research practices towards more transparency. But how can it also be a chance for SAJIP? From my perspective, the crisis might trigger some changes in SAJIP policies and strategic decisions that on the long run could improve the publicity and visibi (...truncated)