NISO Publishes Recommended Practice on Reproducibility Badging and Definitions

From a NISO Announcement:

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) today announces the publication of its Recommended Practice, RP-31-2021, Reproducibility Badging and Definitions. Developed by the NISO Taxonomy, Definitions, and Recognition Badging Scheme Working Group, this new Recommended Practice provides a set of recognition standards that can be deployed across scholarly publishing outputs to easily recognize and reward the sharing of data and methods.

Validating research by sharing the data and methods used enables the reproducibility of results, something that funding agencies and publishers alike are increasingly encouraging, supporting, and even requiring. Until now, organizations have taken an ad hoc approach to recognition and reward schemes and their related taxonomies. This new Recommended Practice addresses the need for a standardized approach, using common recognition practices, vocabulary, and iconography in order to recognize and reward the sharing of data and methods in a consistent way across different disciplines and organizations. 

Working Group Co-Chair Gerry Grenier, who recently retired from IEEE, commented: “Our NISO working group based its efforts on a 2019 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which listed steps that community participants could take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science, improving reliability and trust. We hope that the unified badge definitions offered in the NISO Recommended Practice will support harmonization across badging applications, boosting the value of scientific outputs and communication.”

“Everyone with an interest in increasing transparency around the reproducibility of scholarly research results — librarians, publishers, service providers, funding agencies, and of course researchers themselves — will benefit from this output  of our Taxonomy, Definitions, and Recognition Badging Scheme Working Group,” said Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “Our thanks to Gerry, his fellow co-chairs Lorena Barba of George Washington University, Wayne Graves of ACM, and all the members of the working group for their hard work in bringing together a number of previously silo-ed reproducibility badging efforts in different scholarly communities. This will enable a more consistent and standardized approach to recognizing and rewarding those who facilitate reproducibility through the sharing of their research data and methods.”

The NISO Reproducibility Badging and Definitions Recommended Practice is available via the working group’s web page.

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