All other things being equal, two-stage research funding processes that involve the initial submission of a relatively short proposal containing only minimal information (typically referred to as an outline proposal) followed by a preparation and submission of a full proposal will on average require less effort from their applicants than will single-stage processes. But it is likely that a funder operating a process which begins with a lower-effort outline stage will receive more applications than they might have expected to see had applicants been required initially to prepare a full proposal in a single-stage process. The net effect of these interacting and competing influences on the overall effort required in, and efficiency of, a funding process is not currently known and so is investigated in this work using an Agent-Based Modelling approach. The results of this model suggest that while the number of applications submitted will indeed increase, perhaps by as much as 40%, if two-stage processes are used, the level of applicant effort per unit output (that is, unit of funding awarded or number of awards made) may be reduced by around 15% to 20%. A weaker but more general interpretation, that does not rely so much on the specifics of the model, is that substantial increases in demand arising from use of outline processes might still come with an overall decrease in applicant effort. A reasonable conclusion is that more extensive use of two-stage research funding processes may lead to significant cost savings.

May 12, 2026

Scientific communication faces a dual crisis: exponential publication growth overwhelms human readers, and fragmented research practices block automated synthesis. AI-assisted writing exacerbates the volume problem, producing papers faster than they can be read. Behavioral and social sciences in particular suffer from incomparable stimulus databases, jingle–jangle measurement fallacies, and demographic blindness that conceals effect heterogeneity. Current AI tools aid comprehension and summarization yet cannot aggregate findings from incommensurable studies and risk amplifying biases when trained on unstructured, unverified text. We propose restructuring scientific papers for dual audiences: front-loaded narratives for time-pressed human readers, paired with machine-readable appendices containing executable code, standardized metadata, and ontologically mapped constructs. This design turns papers into queryable research environments where readers can interrogate data and rerun analyses, and where structured appendices enable automated verification of statistical methods and AI-assisted peer review grounded in executable rather than narrative claims. Such papers become nodes in continuously updated evidence networks: each publication automatically contributes effect sizes to real-time meta-analyses, with corrections and retractions propagating through dependent analyses. Widespread adoption will require institutional recognition of structured documentation as essential scholarly output and computational infrastructure that serves both human comprehension and machine analysis.

May 6, 2026

A persistent concern about implementation of preregistration and Registered Reports in psychology is that doing so would reduce the frequency and value of exploratory research, and therefore restrict creativity, serendipity, and discovery. As we are nearly 15 years on from the initial proposal to adopt registration in psychology, it seems time to formally examine whether these concerns have any merit. The purpose of the present study is to find out. In this proposed project, we will examine a matched set of Registered Reports, preregistered articles, and traditional articles (total N = 300) for the frequency of reported exploratory research, defined as any analysis that is indicated to not be a planned test of a specific hypothesis. This project will provide strong data that should provide an empirical basis to be used in future discussion about the impact of registration on exploratory research.

May 5, 2026

The practice of repeatedly testing published results with the same data (reproduction) or new data (replication) is currently gaining traction in the social sciences, owing to multiple failures to reproduce and replicate published findings. Along with increased skepticism have come guidelines for the repeated testing of hypotheses from various disciplines and fields. This guide aims to enable researchers to conduct high-quality reproductions and replications across social science disciplines. First we summarize recent developments, then provide a comprehensive guide to carrying out reproductions and replications, and finally present an example for how guidance needs to be tailored for specific fields. Our guide covers the entire research process: choosing a target study, deciding between different types of reproductions and replications, planning and running the new study, analyzing the results, discussing outcomes in the light of potential differences, and publishing a report.

May 4, 2026

The term Bronze open access (Bronze OA) describes research articles that are free to read on publisher-hosted sites, but lack concrete license information that would allow any form of reuse beyond reading. Bronze OA is an under-researched facet of open access surrounded by many uncertainties regarding its causes and their individual significance. This study aims to reduce these uncertainties by providing an overview over the state of Bronze OA within Web of Science, and by investigating relationships between research fields, publishers, and their rates of Bronze OA. We analyze 3,943,511 Bronze OA publications registered in Web of Science since 2000, applying statistical analyses and heat maps. Our results show high occurrences of Bronze OA in biologic and medical fields, while arts & humanities, engineering sciences, physics, and chemistry comprise the lower end of the spectrum. Regarding publishers, large university presses and the BMJ Group stand out as heavy users of Bronze OA. Continuations of this study will semi-manually investigate article pages of Bronze OA publications to provide empirical evidence for the significance of different speculated reasons for the Bronze OA label.

May 4, 2026

The peer-review system remains central to scientific communication, yet increasing submission volumes, shifts toward open access publishing, and disruptions such as the Covid-19 pandemic have raised concerns about its efficiency and accuracy. This study aims to systematically map trends in acceptance and publication delays across more than six million PubMed-indexed articles published between 2016 and 2025. Using journal metadata and peer-review information, we will examine how journal characteristics, reviewer practices, and field-specific factors shape these delays. To achieve this, we will employ a combination of descriptive statistics, generalized additive models and machine learning algorithms to capture trends, seasonality, and journal-level effects. The project will provide a comprehensive description of how publication timelines have evolved and identify the key determinants driving variations across journals and disciplines.

April 23, 2026

Open Engagement of societal actors in scientific processes is a key pillar of Open Science. This paper explores how the broad spectrum of open engagement approaches can be systematically operationalized to classify research projects. Used terminologies for these approaches, like e.g., citizen science, lack differentiation which complicate comprehensive monitoring, and, therefore, a better understanding and description of open engagement practices are needed. Open Science Monitoring requires an interdisciplinary discussion of terminology and an understanding of the different research processes, practices, and outputs. In this paper, we present our preliminary findings based on a corpus of 91 participatory research projects from the Berlin University Alliance (BUA), collected as part of the development of a Participatory Research Map (PR Map).

April 21, 2026

In this paper we introduce a novel implementation of the Relative Intensity of Collaboration (RIC, (Fuchs et al., 2021): we distinguish between relative intensity of bilaterally coauthored (RICbila) and multilaterally coauthored (RICmulti) papers. We calculate both indicators for Russian collaboration 1995-2024 with Belarus, Ukraine, European countries bordering Russia, Belarus, and/or the Black Sea, five other large European countries, and China and the US. We find that the relative intensity of Russian bilateral collaboration with those countries is mostly decreasing, and rapidly falling for Bulgaria, Germany, and Ukraine, countries with which collaboration used to be intense. In contrast, the relative intensity of bilateral collaboration with China is increasing rapidly. The relative intensity of multilateral collaboration is mostly decreasing, although more gradually. We conclude that distinguishing between different collaboration patterns helps in understanding the consequences of geopolitical developments for research collaboration.

April 20, 2026

The domination of scientific publishing in the Global North by major commercial publishers is harmful to science. We need the most powerful members of the research community, funders, governments and Universities, to lead the drive to re-communalise publishing to serve science not the market.

April 10, 2026

This article presents the results of a survey conducted in 2024 among research performing organizations (RPOs) in Germany on how they collect data on publication costs. Of the 583 invitees, 258 (44.3%) completed the questionnaire. This survey is the first comprehensive study on the recording of publication costs at RPOs in Germany. The results show that the majority of surveyed RPOs recorded publication costs at least in part. However, procedures in this regard were often non-binding. Respondents' ratings of the reliability of the collection of data on publication costs varied by the source of publication funding. Eighty percent of respondents rated the contribution of collecting data on publication costs to shaping the open access transformation as "very important" or "important." Yet, these data were used as a basis for strategic decisions in only 59% of the surveyed RPOs. Moreover, most respondents considered the implementation of an information budget at their institutions by 2025 unlikely. We discuss the implications of these findings for the open access transformation.

April 2, 2026