Reproducible research practices and transparency across linguistics

Abstract

Scientific studies of language span across many disciplines and provide evidence for social, cultural, cognitive, technological, and biomedical studies of human nature and behavior. As it becomes increasingly empirical and quantitative, linguistics has been facing challenges and limitations of the scientific practices that pose barriers to reproducibility and replicability. One of the proposed solutions to the widely acknowledged reproducibility and replicability crisis has been the implementation of transparency practices, e.g., open access publishing, preregistrations, sharing study materials, data, and analyses, performing study replications, and declaring conflicts of interest. Here, we have assessed the prevalence of these practices in 600 randomly sampled journal articles from linguistics across two time points. In line with similar studies in other disciplines, we found that 35% of the articles were published open access and the rates of sharing materials, data, and protocols were below 10%. None of the articles reported preregistrations, 1% reported replications, and 10% had conflict of interest statements. These rates have not increased noticeably between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019, pointing to remaining barriers and the slow adoption of open and reproducible research practices in linguistics. To facilitate adoption of these practices, we provide a range of recommendations and solutions for implementing transparency and improving reproducibility of research in linguistics.