A bridge too far? Replication, transparency, and the politics of evidence in higher education research

Replication and reproducibility are central to cumulative science, yet their status within higher education research remains unclear. This study examines how replication is practiced, enabled, and discursively framed in four leading journals in the field. Using complementary qualitative designs, the study combines document analysis of replication-related publications (2014–November 2025) with critical discourse analysis of journal guidelines, transparency policies, and editorial texts to reveal how replication is positioned both institutionally and rhetorically. Findings reveal that replication is exceedingly rare. Only 35 articles across 5,195 publications used the term ‘replicat*,’ and only 11 met minimal criteria for replication. Of these, most were internal robustness checks by original authors; only three represented independent replications. The first layer of the analysis shows that two journals under the same publisher choose novelty, significance, and originality, implicitly signaling that replication lies outside their core mission. In contrast, two journals from a different publisher highlight methodological clarity and offer more structured data-sharing policies, yet still do not identify replication as a recognized contribution type. Editorial discourse across journals constructs higher education as a complex, context-dependent domain where diversity of perspectives is valued over confirmatory designs, and replication remains largely invisible. Taken together, the results show that replication in higher education research is uncommon, and systematically unsupported. Strengthening the field’s scientific foundations will require clearer institutional expectations for transparency, stronger policy frameworks for data availability, and explicit recognition of replication as a legitimate scholarly contribution.