Pilots

TIER2's Decision Aid will provide clarity on the meaning, relevance, and feasibility of ‘reproducibility’ for researchers to aid them in identifying what type of reproducibility is relevant for their research and indicate what they must consider regarding how feasible such ‘reproducibility’ would be for them. The tool will be piloted with two researcher groups (qualitative and machine learning researchers).

The Reproducibility Management Plan (RMP) Pilot aims to create a prototype of key thematic subjects and questions that will serve as the starting point to support reproducibility at the planning stage of research. Work involves defining what an RMP is, integrating it into the ARGOS service, and testing its effectiveness with feedback from the community. The pilot addresses researchers, beneficiaries and funders for its adoption.

Computational experiments are essential for modern research, yet their complexity often hinders reproducibility. The TIER2 Pilot 3 publication “A Virtual Laboratory for Managing Computational Experiments” introduces SCHEMA lab, an open-source virtual environment that enables the design, execution, and tracking of containerised experiments with full provenance. By capturing configurations, datasets, software environments, and performance metrics, SCHEMA lab enhances reproducibility and transparency across disciplines. It supports individual researchers and research infrastructures in organising, comparing, and reusing computational workflows, fostering credible, reusable, and FAIR digital science practices.

In this Pilot, we aim to provide a structure of well-defined checklists and templates that can help review data and code reproducibility for computational social scientists. The checklists and review templates cater for the specific needs of the three research phases, i.e., planning and data collection, process and analysis and finally sharing and archiving the research resources. It results in building trust and authority in the social science research community.

The Reproducibility Promotion Plan for Funders (RPP) provides a comprehensive policy template with actionable recommendations to help funders foster reproducible research practices across three key areas of their work: evaluation and monitoring, policy and definitions, and incentives. The RPP serves as both guidance and inspiration for research funders to develop robust internal practices that strengthen their funding processes, while also managing external expectations by clearly communicating reproducibility requirements to researchers. Designed to be adaptable, the RPP offers best practice examples and practical tools that funders can tailor to their specific institutional contexts and levels of experience. Ultimately, the RPP aims to catalyse cultural and procedural change within funding organisations, empowering them to support researchers in conducting rigorous, transparent, and reproducible research.

The Reproducibility Monitoring Dashboard Pilot aims to develop tools that enable funding agencies to track and monitor the reusability of research artifacts across various projects, programs, topics, and disciplines. This auto-generated dashboard assesses the impacts of policies related to data and code sharing. Furthermore, we are establishing essential requirements to make the dashboard user-friendly for publishers.

This Pilot is aimed at increasing data sharing in published work. Data sharing is an important building block for increased reproducibility & transparency, but current rates of sharing are low.

The Editorial Reference Handbook informs and assists scholarly publishers in supporting the sharing of digital research objects and in operationalising findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) research practices by addressing gaps in editorial workflows, policy implementation and stakeholder alignment. The Handbook comprises three interrelated components—a checklist, detailed guidance, and a flowchart—intended primarily for in-house editorial staff while also providing value to reviewers, authors, and service providers.  

The Pilot included representatives of Cambridge University Press, Cell Press, EMBO Press, F1000 (Taylor & Francis), GigaScience Press, Lancet, Oxford University Press, PLOS, Springer Nature, Wiley.