Improving Science Will Require More Than Just Training

Van Til et al. made many implicit and explicit assumptions about the goals, practices, and implementation strategies that require empirical evidence or are conditioned or unsubstantiated by existing evidence. Open science has a set of goals that should be carefully defined and measured. Open-science practices (e.g., study registrations before data collection or secondary analyses, writing registered reports, data sharing) are interventions designed to achieve those goals. Graduate coursework in open science is an example of an implementation strategy, a method used to promote the adoption of open-science interventions. To successfully improve science through the adoption of open-science practices, we outline how existing literatures can be leveraged to inform and advance predictions about how to most effectively improve science, and we call on the field to maintain cultural and epistemic humility to better understand when, where, and why people might adopt open-science practices.