| Abstract: |
Many developments to reform the research landscape have occurred over the past
decade. These changes have been made with broad goals to improve the
‘openness’ of research and often assumed to be ‘methodologically -agnostic’;
that is, they ostensibly have benefits for all researchers occupying all
epistemological and methodological positions. ‘Open science’ initiatives such
as study pre-registration (i.e., specifying research aims and analytical plan
ahead of data access), open data sharing, open-access publication, and open
materials sharing are becoming increasingly mainstream across many fields
within social research and the natural sciences. While there has been much
criticism of these interventions, largely from the qualitative research
community, we want to draw attention to a troubling trend in the promotion of
open science: the leaking of standards relevant only to quantitative research
to all paradigms. Or, as others refer to it, “positivism creep”. Here, we
situate positivism creep (i.e., the creeping of positivist conventions to all
research) within research policy, we highlight its increasing prevalence
within open science reforms, and we warn against a future which could alienate
many non-positivist scholars. We argue that the primary framing of open
science as the pursuit of reproducibility and objectivity risks promoting
positivism creep in the social sciences and humanities. In particular, we
suggest that overly strict open research requirements placed by funders may
reduce the range and variety of epistemological positions that can be taken by
researchers, with particularly deleterious effects for qualitative researchers. |