Where does replication research stand in economics and business studies and what does a realistic, low-risk entry point for researchers look like? Team members of the new journal Replication Research (R2) explain why Open Science is not about prestige but about good research and offer practical tips for getting started.
Replication Research (R2) is a newly founded interdisciplinary diamond open access journal for replication and reproduction studies. The journal welcomes submissions from a wide range of disciplines including management sciences, behavioural economics, and decision making. In this interview, Lukas Röseler, journal manager and editor-in-chief, and senior editors Flávio Azevedo and Lukas Wallrich talk about the state of replication research in economics and business studies. All three are also members of the FORRT Replication Hub, which provides researchers with tools to track, explore, conduct, and disseminate replication studies.
Before diving in, it is worth clarifying two terms that are central to this interview and often confused: a reproduction repeats a study using the same data and methods to check whether the original results can be obtained again. In contrast, a replication tests whether a finding holds up under changed conditions – with new data, different methods, or both. Both are essential https://openeconomics.zbw.eu/en/knowledgebase/why-reproducibility-and-replicability-are-important/ for robust and trustworthy research: only results that can be reproduced and replicated can be generalised, and only generalisable results can serve as a reliable basis for evidence-based policy advice. In the following, we use "replication research" as an umbrella term that encompasses both.
How would you assess the current situation in economics and business studies with regard to replication research, and what structural changes would be needed for it to become more commonplace there?
The picture looks different for reproductions and replications. We believe that reproduction studies are already quite common in some areas of economics. Several initiatives are actively pushing this forward: the AEA Data Editor for example ensures that reproductions are feasible, the Institute for Replication carries out hundreds of reproductions each year, and the JCRE provides a high-quality diamond open access outlet for the resulting reports.
Replications are a different story. A structural challenge we see here is the strong drive for originality: institutions are evaluated based on “research excellence” (that means, fast progress), grants reward original ideas, and journals prioritise novel results to get citations, a higher impact factor, and gain power – that is, to be in a position where they can charge high subscription costs or article processing fees. Innovation matters, but not at the expense of repeatability: if research keeps moving from topic to topic without checking whether what has been built is robust, the entire body of knowledge becomes fragile.
The good news is that the infrastructure for more replication research is already in place. What needs to catch up is research assessment. With Open Science, we are already seeing a clear trend away from pure originality towards a balance between originality and robustness. With AI-generated research on the rise and success rates in reproductions and replications remaining low, we believe that repeatability will inevitably gain importance. Many institutions have already committed to this shift towards a stronger emphasis on quality and not merely quantity of research outputs for example through initiatives like SF DORA and CoARA.
Many researchers hesitate because they fear that replication and reproduction studies might carry less prestige or might be harder to publish. What would you say to them – and what does a realistic, low-risk entry point look like?
These concerns are not entirely unfounded: replication research tends to attract fewer citations than original research and sometimes doesn't even affect how the original findings are perceived. Moreover, many high-impact journals remain reluctant to publish replication and reproduction studies. And yet, researchers still undertake such work despite the prevailing incentive structures – not for prestige or citations, but to learn new methods, ensure the robustness of findings they build upon, teach students, or because they simply care about a specific result. At its core, Open Science is not about prestige but about good research.
Regarding the low-risk entry point, a good start is to first read a replication or reproduction to get a sense of what it entails. To find a study, you can upload a reference list from your teaching slides, textbook, or articles to the FLoRA Annotator or install our Zotero plugin, which checks your library or specific folders for replications. Both tools tell you which studies have already been repeated and what the outcomes were. If none of the studies have been repeated, you can browse a thousand replications by topic in the FReD Explorer.
Next, do a reanalysis of a published study yourself. If you want to team up with others, you can participate in the Institute for Replication’s “Replication Games”. At the FORRT Replication Hub, we regularly organise events and offer Open Educational Resources such as the WIP handbook to provide guidance throughout the entire process, from picking a target study to writing it up and choosing a suitable journal. We think that in most cases, dedicated replication journals are a much better fit than the original study's journal: they do not charge publication fees due to their diamond open access status, and the risk of rejection purely on grounds of being a replication or reproduction is lower.
Turning now to R2 specifically: what does the submission process at R2 look like in practice, and what sets it apart from a conventional journal submission?
Like every other journal, R2 has submission guidelines and peer review. However, we complement this with rigorous and transparent quality assurance and high open science standards: we conduct thorough editorial assessments before peer review that other journals can re-use. Peer review is non-anonymous (though early-career researchers can request pseudonymization if they are concerned about criticising their superiors). Reviewers are credited in reports that we publish regardless of the editorial decision in our Zenodo Community. Moreover, empirical articles undergo a reproducibility check resulting in a public certificate, and there is an optional social responsibility review path.
With our emphasis on transparency, authors need to provide a couple of additional statements, for example on author contributions. We decided to be open in the sense of inclusivity rather than methodological strictness, which means that data sharing is not a requirement, but if data is not shared, there needs to be a good reason and a statement elaborating on that. We also offer lots of resources for interested authors such as templates for manuscripts and cover letters. Reading and publishing are free of charge.
What has surprised you most in your work on R2 or in looking at submitted studies so far?
We have been positively overwhelmed by the feedback and support we received in creating and running R2. The University of Münster provided internal funding for the journal launch, our colleagues responsible for the university-hosted e-journals helped set up the website, almost all researchers we approached as Associate Editors were willing to contribute, and editors of other diamond open access journals openly shared their models with us. The latter has led us to creating the Replication Journal Federation – a network of high-quality journals focusing on reproductions and replications. Even finding reviewers has been easier than expected. We think this has to do with our idealism towards what academia should be like – and the fact that many researchers are dissatisfied with the current state and share our mission to improve it.
We would like to thank Lukas Röseler, Flávio Azevedo and Lukas Wallrich for the interview.
Tip: You can find more information on replicability and reproducibility in the Open Economics Guide.
Lukas Röseler is postdoctoral research associate and managing director of the Münster Center for Open Science, Infrastructure Liaison of FORRT and journal manager and editor-in-chief of R2. Flávio Azevedo is an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at Utrecht University, co-founder and director of FORRT and co-founder and senior editor of R2. Lukas Wallrich is a senior lecturer in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck Business School,