FORRT: An open science initiative
Interview with Flavio Azevedo
What is FORRT, and how does it differ from other initiatives to promote transparency and reproducibility in science?
FA: FORRT stands for Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training. FORRT is an initiative that aims to advance research transparency, reproducibility, rigor, and ethics through pedagogical reform, open educational resources, and metascience. Unlike other initiatives, FORRT emphasizes education and pedagogy – in addition to metascience and social justice advocacy in the realm of open science – providing a comprehensive framework for training and support to improve scientific practice. Today, FORRT has become a global community of almost 1,300 scholars from different disciplines and career stages who are active in metascience and co-create open and inclusive learning materials to facilitate the incorporation of open science principles in research, teaching, and mentoring.
How does FORRT specifically support the integration of open science practices into economics and business research and teaching?
FA: FORRT supports a range of disciplines in social sciences, including economics and business research, by providing an e-learning platform for educators to Find, Access, Interoperate, and Reuse (FAIR) open educational resources (e.g., educational nexus, curated resources), teaching materials (e.g., lesson plans, syllabi, summaries), training opportunities focused on transparency and reproducibility (e.g., Post-Edu), and metascience research (e.g., Replication Hub). FORRT pays special attention to creating pedagogical content that is easy to adapt and use across disciplines (e.g., pedagogies). It offers a structured approach to integrating open science practices into curricula (e.g., clusters), thereby enhancing the quality of research methods teaching and promoting a culture of openness.
What are the concrete benefits of engaging with FORRT for economists and business researchers who want to work on the quality and transparency of their research?
FA: Using FORRT learning materials and other resources, economists and business researchers can enhance the credibility and reliability of their work, increase the visibility and impact of their research, and contribute to a culture of openness and accountability by teaching the principles of open science to the next generation of academics and consumers of science. They can also join a vibrant community of interdisciplinary and international researchers interested in the topic of open science, and get involved with participatory research and big-team science initiatives. Building on our community’s open practices, they can find collaborators and ways to broaden the dissemination of research findings.
Now regarding FORRT’s open educational resources and pedagogical infrastructure, how can economics and business researchers benefit? And how can they use the teaching and mentoring materials developed by FORRT to improve the quality of their own teaching?
FA: Researchers can use FORRT’s resources to improve their understanding and application of open science practices, enhance their teaching by incorporating up-to-date materials on transparency and reproducibility, and foster a collaborative learning environment that encourages critical thinking and methodological rigor. Indeed, economics and business researchers can incorporate FORRT’s materials into their courses to introduce students to open science practices, design activities that promote critical thinking and transparency, and mentor colleagues and students on how to conduct reproducible and replicable research. With these goals, we developed a community-sourced glossary of open science terms, which is currently undergoing expansion and translation into additional languages and we collected exemplary instances of pedagogies in open science to reduce the initial costs of integrating field-specific education with open and reproducible scholarship principles and to serve as initial templates towards the creation of flexible and personalised pedagogy. Our community also facilitated the collection of over 3000 replications and reverse effects in social sciences, summarised over 200 papers on open science topics that weren’t open access, created a collection of tried-and-tested lesson plans for teaching, produced a dynamic and consensus-based framework to understand and engage with open science curriculum, catalogued over 100 community-built syllabi on how to teach open science, and curated over 1200 resources on open science. Lastly, we also reviewed and synthesized evidence that investigates whether embedding open and reproducible science into research training can confer benefits for students. This includes undergraduate and postgraduate students, across disciplines, on an international level. The systematic review focused on integrating open and reproducible scholarship into teaching and learning and found that there are significant benefits (but also challenges) of teaching open and reproducible scholarship and identified a positive impact of teaching open science on students’ understanding and appreciation of scientific research practices.
Researchers can incorporate FORRT’s materials into their courses to introduce students to open science practices, use the resources to design activities that promote critical thinking and transparency, and mentor colleagues and students on how to conduct reproducible research. These materials can be adapted for a wide range of disciplines across social sciences, including business and economics, and beyond.
One of the largest FORRT projects is the Replication Hub, with over 170 contributors. Can you tell us more about that?
FA: The FORRT Replication Hub is a comprehensive set of resources designed to support and elevate replication research across disciplines. Our goal is to make replication studies accessible, standardized, and rewarding. The hub includes tools, projects, and software to facilitate the discovery, teaching, execution, analysis, reporting, and dissemination of replication research. By fostering a culture that prioritizes verification and reproducibility, the Replication Hub aims to improve practice across the social sciences—including economics and business research.
At the heart lies the FORRT Replication Database (FReD), the largest repository of replication findings globally. FReD includes an R package to streamline data handling and visualization, alongside an active community of over 170 researchers dedicated to advancing replication studies. While most current entries are from psychology, we are progressively incorporating replications from all other fields in the social and behavioural sciences, including economics and management – currently as part of a large-scale partnership with the Center for Open Science (COS).
Contributing to FReD is open to all (see here: https://osf.io/s7rtm). Contributors are publicly recognized, and they can participate in the forthcoming data publication planned for 2026. Researchers can submit replication studies in a very brief format to enhance the visibility of this work, addressing the current lack of systematic methods for identifying replication studies. Comprehensive entries are also welcome (https://forrt.org/replication-hub/submit), which help enable automated meta-analyses and summaries. Researchers can also use our standardized reporting template to publish replications as preprints (https://osf.io/3jgxd). This template will eventually be machine-readable and aligns with our collaborative guide for conducting interdisciplinary replication studies, helping researchers document and share their work.
What recommendations would you give to economics and business researchers who want to start reforming their research practices in line with FORRT?
FA: Researchers should start by familiarizing themselves with open science principles and practices, utilizing FORRT’s resources and training opportunities (https://forrt.org/nexus), and engaging with the community to share experiences and learn from others. Gradually adopting open practices, such as pre-registration, data sharing, and open peer review, can help build credibility and foster a culture of transparency.
How can the FORRT community help to promote a culture of transparency and reproducibility in economics?
FA: The FORRT community can promote transparency and reproducibility by providing a supportive network for sharing resources, experiences, and best practices, advocating for open science in academic and professional forums, and collaborating on initiatives that encourage openness and accountability in research. Many of FORRT’s educational materials can be applied to a wide range of research disciplines, and we welcome the input of researchers from across the disciplinary spectrum, including business and economics.
How does FORRT support the discussion on the ethical and social implications of a research pedagogy focused on openness and credibility?
FA: FORRT actively facilitates discussions on the ethical and social implications of open and credible research pedagogy by emphasizing transparency, inclusivity, and social justice in research and education. Through its pedagogical infrastructure and metascience initiatives, FORRT provides educators and researchers with structured resources that embed ethical considerations—such as equitable access to knowledge, responsible data stewardship, and inclusivity in research participation—into training and curricula.
One of FORRT’s core contributions is its systematic review of open scholarship pedagogy, which synthesizes evidence on the benefits and challenges of integrating open science principles into education. This work highlights the transformative potential of openness in making research training more transparent, reproducible, and equitable, while also acknowledging the risks of exclusion if these practices are not implemented thoughtfully.
FORRT also advocates for ethical authorship practices and credit allocation through its use of the CRediT taxonomy, ensuring that contributions are fairly recognized—particularly from early-career and historically underrepresented researchers. Additionally, through its Replication Hub and educational materials, FORRT fosters a culture of intellectual humility and critical engagement, helping students and researchers recognize the broader social responsibilities of scientific inquiry.
Beyond pedagogy, FORRT’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is evident in (a) recruiting and training early-career scholars for its projects and initiatives, (b) its collaborations with researchers from Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) and (c) its engagement with marginalized communities, such as neurodivergent scholars and researchers from underrepresented linguistic and cultural backgrounds. By foregrounding these perspectives, FORRT ensures that open science is not just about increasing transparency but also about fostering ethical and socially responsible research environments that reflect diverse lived experiences.
Lastly, as part of FORRT’s commitment to ethical research practices, FORRT is actively involved in the development of R2, a forthcoming journal dedicated to reproducible research. The journal’s constitution, code of conduct, and governance structures are being designed to ensure that all published research adheres to the highest standards of scientific integrity, and ethical and social responsibility. Further, to foster transparency and community engagement, R2 will host a series of open meetings covering key aspects of the journal’s structure and policies, such as editorial governance, open peer review, article evaluation, and long-term funding models. These meetings, held between February and May 2025, will serve not only as an educational initiative but also as a way to democratize the journal-making process, ensuring that interested researchers, stakeholders, and community members can provide input into the formation of R2’s editorial policies.
In sum, FORRT bridges ethical scholarship and open pedagogy by providing practical tools, engaging in metascience, and advocating for policies that balance transparency with fairness, inclusivity, and responsibility in research and education.
Thank you!
*This interview was conducted on February 17, 2025.
About Dr Flavio Azevedo:
Flavio Azevedo is an assistant professor of interdisciplinary social science at Utrecht University. His main research interests are the political psychology of ideological attitudes and their psychological foundations, and the integration of open science into higher education. Flavio Azevedo was a research associate at the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab and a Fulbright scholar at New York University, New York, USA. He held further postdoctoral positions at the Saxon Center for Criminological Social Research (ZFKS) and at the Institute for Communication Science at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Flavio Azevedo is co-founder and director of FORRT – A Framework for Open and Reproducible Research.
Contact: http://flavioazevedo.com/
*The following people participated in the interview in adition to Flavio Azevedo: Lukas Wallrich, Luke Roseler, Leticia Micheli, Kelly Lloyd, Helena Hartmann, and John Shaw.