From the Blog

It’s finally here! We have spent the past few weeks redesigning the Open Economics Guide’s tool directory from scratch. The result is now live. The Open Economics Guide offers a catalogue currently featuring over 160 free Open Science tools that can make researchers’ day-to-day academic work considerably easier. To help users find what they’re looking for even more quickly, the tool catalogue has now been comprehensively revamped. On the new overview page, users can now filter by specific research activity (‘Find literature’, ‘Publish texts’, ‘Choose a licence’, etc.) and other criteria (‘non-profit operator’, ‘server location in the EU’, ‘open source’, […]

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A README file is a central component of every replication package. Many leading economics journals, including those of the American Economic Association (AEA), and a growing number of business journals require one with every submission. With the right templates and a clear structure, the file can be created without excessive effort. In this post, we explain how best to go about it. A README file serves as a guide to the replication package – the collection of all materials needed to independently follow, reproduce, and replicate the results of an empirical research article. It explains the contents of the package […]

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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 […]

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Teaching reproducible research methods benefits not only students and lecturers, but also the overall quality of scholarly work. They should therefore be systematically incorporated into the curriculum from the undergraduate level onwards. This argument was put forward by Richard Ball at the sixth “Coffee Lecture on Open Science Education”, where he presented an initiative to integrate reproducibility into teaching in economics, business studies and the social sciences: Project TIER. On April 23, 2026, the sixth event in the series “Coffee Lecture on Open Science Education” took place. Richard Ball, Professor of Economics at Haverford College (USA), used Project TIER (Teaching […]

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Replication, data transparency and documentation may sound abstract and like a compulsory exercise to some, but they offer many advantages for research practice. Communicating Open Science therefore means doing more than simply explaining terms. How its practical benefits for one’s own research can still be conveyed at the end of a long conference day was demonstrated by an Open Science Happy Hour at the VHB conference. How can one talk about documentation, traceability and replicability in a way that goes beyond mere exhortation? At the VHB conference – the annual meeting of the German Academic Association for Business Research – […]

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Open Science encompasses a wide range of approaches, methods and practices, which can quickly become overwhelming, particularly for those new to the field. The publication ‘Expedition Open Science Land: A Travel Guide for Business Research’ addresses this challenge. Using the metaphor of a journey, it encourages researchers in business studies to take their first steps towards Open Science. The publication ‘Expedition Open Science Land: A Travel Guide for Business Research’ was published in January. The idea for the travel guide came from the authors Marko Sarstedt, Doreen Siegfried (ZBW), Meikel Neumann, Susanne J. Adler, Oliver Genschow and Monika Imschloss during […]

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In 2026, there will once again be plenty of opportunities to learn about and discuss Open Science and related topics at various online and offline events. To help you choose, this blog post presents some highlights from our event calendar. As always, the focus is on the use of Open Science in business studies and economics, scientific methods, and the role of AI in a constantly evolving research landscape. Workshops, seminars, conferences, coffee lectures and much more, whether as online events or on-site: in 2026, there will again be many events that offer a great opportunity to refresh and expand […]

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