Center for Open Science announces Elsevier as new signatory to TOP Guideline

The Center for Open Science is pleased to announce that Elsevier, the information analytics business specializing in science and health, is furthering its support for improving the quality of research by becoming a signatory to the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines.

The TOP Guidelines are a community-driven effort to align research behaviors with scientific ideals. Transparency, open sharing, and reproducibility are core values of science, but not always part of daily practice. Journals, funders, and institutions can increase reproducibility and integrity of research by aligning their author or grantee guidelines with the TOP Guidelines.

Elsevier is actively rolling out many of the TOP Guidelines in a way that goes beyond simply reviewing and signing a commitment to implementing them in the future. Importantly, Elsevier has developed new journal data guidelines that align with the TOP Data Standards, and has implemented these across approximately 1,800 journals. These data guidelines are already integrated into Evise, Elsevier’s author submission system, to ensure authors can easily share and/or link to their data. Elsevier also updated its Guides for Authors clearly explaining which actions authors are expected to take.

“We are delighted to collaborate with Elsevier to help improve transparency practices across their journals portfolio,” said Brian Nosek, Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. “Elsevier is integrating TOP principles directly into the submission workflow making it easy for authors to share the data supporting their articles. The TOP Guidelines are one element of a broader strategy to shift cultural norms and incentives for improving transparency in publishing. Combining with other effective interventions like Open Science Badges and Registered Reports, journals can foster significant progress toward an open science.”

“Elsevier journals now encourage and enable authors to share data or make a data availability statement, which is part of our ongoing focus on research integrity and supporting good quality research. Many of our journals have already implemented strong policies for data sharing, for example EBioMedicine and Cognition require the sharing of underlying data,” added Philippe Terheggen, Elsevier’s Managing Director of Science, Technical and Medical Journals. “We look forward to strengthening our work with COS and will provide feedback from authors and editors, to develop the best possible solutions to promote reproducibility, transparency and quality of research.”

In addition to the data guidelines, Elsevier is already a long-term supporter of other TOP initiatives. For example, in 2013 Elsevier was one of the early adopters of Registered Reports and in 2016 Cell Press, a division of Elsevier, introduced STAR Methods (for Structured, Transparent, Accessible Reporting of methods and resources), a new approach to presenting scientific methods in research articles designed to improve transparency and reproducibility.

Elsevier joins other major publishing stakeholders in the scientific community such as AAAS, Springer Nature, Wiley, and the Royal Society by supporting TOP.

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About Center for Open Science
The Center for Open Science (COS) is a non-profit technology startup founded in 2013 with a mission to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scientific research. COS pursues this mission by building communities around open science practices, supporting metascience research, and developing and maintaining free, open source software tools. The Open Science Framework (OSF), COS’s flagship product, is a web application that connects and supports the research workflow, enabling scientists to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their research. Researchers use the OSF to collaborate, document, archive, share, and register research projects, materials, and data. Learn more at cos.io and osf.io.

About Elsevier
Elsevier is a global information analytics business that helps institutions and professionals progress science, advance healthcare and improve performance for the benefit of humanity. Elsevier provides digital solutions and tools in the areas of strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and professional education; including ScienceDirect, Scopus, ClinicalKey and Sherpath. Elsevier publishes over 2,500 digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell, more than 35,000 e-book titles and many iconic reference works, including Gray’s Anatomy. Elsevier is part of RELX Group, a global provider of information and analytics for professionals and business customers across industries. www.elsevier.com