BTSCON 2024 Advancing Open and Big-team Reproducible Science through Increased Representation (ABRIR): Barriers for researchers in the majority world and paths forward

Slides for a panel session for the third annual Big Team Science Conference, held virtually via Zoom October 8-10, 2024.

Abstract

Big-team and open science efforts have made great advancements. Specifically, big-team science, through large scale collaborations, has resulted in amazing progress in a range of scientific fields. In psychology, big-team and open science have helped improve methodological rigor and transparency as well as increase statistical power. However, both have fallen into many of the same problems that psychology as a field has in the past. There is a lack of representation of Low- and Middle-Income Country (LMIC) researchers, as well as other marginalized scientists. This lack of representation extends to samples, methodologies, and theoretical foundations, which hinders the advancement of generalizable psychological knowledge. Various academic associations, among them Advancing Big-team Reproducible Science through Increased Representation (ABRIR), founded in 2022, have started to address some of these issues. ABRIR seeks to diagnose the possible barriers that researchers from LMIC face as well as potential paths forward. Through collaborations with other associations (e.g. PSA, FORRT, COS) ABRIR has begun to increase access to open science educational materials (e.g. translation of materials, regional webinars in local languages). Further, this summer, ABRIR Hub leaders around the world have been holding regional events to, in part, diagnose barriers and seek possible paths forward to promote the participation of students and researchers in big-team science and open science practices. Through this panel session with representatives of ABRIR Hubs from Southeast Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa, we plan to communicate some of our experiences and those of our regional Hub event attendees. By sharing our voices from the Global South/LMIC, we hope to raise awareness about barriers faced by researchers in LMIC and thus improve representation in Big-Team Science.