Journal of Robustness Reports (Training)

Description

The Journal of Robustness Reports is a multidisciplinary journal that aims to complement published high-profile empirical findings with so-called Robustness Reports: concise reanalyses of the original findings using an alternative analysis methodology. The journal also offers the original authors the opportunity to respond to the reanalyses.

Robustness Reports are limited to 500 words and one display element, with additional material presented as online supplements. When an original article is selected as potentially interesting for a robustness analysis, at least two independent Robustness Reports are required: a proper assessment of robustness generally requires more than a single reanalysis.

The Editorial College is responsible for ensuring sufficient statistical diversity in the Robustness Reports. Potential authors may suggest an empirical finding for a robustness analysis, and may suggest particular analysis teams (including themselves). However, it is ultimately the task of the Editorial College to invite specific teams to contribute a set of Robustness Reports that is both comprehensive and diverse. Therefore, publication in Robustness Reports is by invitation only.

All reanalyses must be fully reproducible and share the corresponding code and data in a FAIR repository. The reanalysis authors might choose to supply the original findings with additional data, which also need to be made publicly available.

Submissions to the Journal of Robustness Reports have to meet our highest editorial standards, and are subjected to our most stringent form of open peer-witnessed refereeing.

Implementing Genuine Open Access, the Journal of Robustness Reports is a publishing venue in which uncompromising scientific quality meets the highest achievable standards of accessibility.

Scope

The Journal of Robustness Reports publishes Robustness Reports of high-profile empirical findings across a wide range of empirical disciplines, including but not limited to psychology, neuroscience, medicine, economics, and physics.

Specialties covered by this Journal

• Multi-specialties

Content

The journal publishes Robustness Reports and the original authors’ responses to those reports.

Each Robustness Report consists of the following sections:

• An Abstract that does not exceed two lines in print. This equates to approximately 180 characters (including spaces).
• A Goal section that outlines the rationale of the reanalysis (e.g., the question that the reanalysis is trying to address).
• A Methods section that provides the necessary background information about the reanalysis.
• A Results section that describes the main outcomes of the reanalysis.
• A Conclusion section that compares the results from the reanalysis to those from the original analysis and assesses the degree to which the reanalysis corroborates or undercuts the conclusions from the original analysis.
• An Acknowledgments and Disclosures section, which may consist of the following subsections:
  • A Reproducibility subsection. The purpose of this subsection is to declare whether or not the reanalysis team was able to reproduce the original analysis, along with an explanation in those cases where this proved to be impossible.
  • A Code and Data Availability subsection. At a minimum, this subsection must include a link to a public FAIR repository that contains the code and data used for the reanalysis. All reanalyses must be fully reproducible. The Robustness Report authors might choose to supply the original findings with additional data, which also need to be made publicly available in the same FAIR repository. (Extraordinary circumstances may warrant an exception to this rule.) The repository may also contain a more extensive version of the Robustness Report.
  • An Author Contribution subsection. For multiple-author articles, this subsection may be used to document the contributorship of the different authors (e.g., using CRediT and tenzing).
  • A Funding subsection.
  • A Conflict of Interest subsection.
• A References section.

Robustness Reports are limited to 500 words (excluding the Code and Literature sections, figure/table captions, and the title page) and one display element (table/figure). Additional details should be presented as online supplements. The original authors’ response is also limited to 500 words and one display element, but need not feature the sections outlined above.

The tone of a Robustness Report needs to be constructive and professional.

Acceptance criteria

Submission and Editorial Process

The Journal of Robustness Reports only accepts invited Robustness Reports. Please contact the Editorial College with suggestions for target articles and potential reanalysis teams.

Initial submission can be an unformatted pdf, however, resubmissions must use the Robustness Reports LaTeX <link> or Word <link> templates.

Authors should follow the authoring guidelines to ensure seamless processing of their manuscript. The SciPost Journals Terms and Conditions apply to all Submissions to Journal of Robustness Reports (Training).

All incoming Submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism, and follow the peer-witnessed refereeing procedures outlined in Editorial procedure.

Minimal number of reports: at least 1 substantial report must have been received; all points raised must have been addressed either in resubmissions or in author replies before a recommendation for publication can be formulated.

All publication decisions are taken by the Editorial College (Robustness Reports), following the rules set out in the Editorial College by-laws.

Accepted submissions benefit from our top-quality production process, and from our industry-leading metadata handling facilities.

Genuine Open Access

Publications in Journal of Robustness Reports (Training) are Genuine Open Access. Take the time to understand what this means, and how we compare to other publishers. We do not profiteer from you or your contributions in any way. We are truly run by and for the academic community, entirely not-for-profit and without any competing interests.

As authors, you retain your copyright: all articles are published in your name under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, allowing freedom to use, reproduce and distribute the articles and related content (unless otherwise noted), for commercial and noncommercial purposes, subject to the citation of the original source.

There are no subscription fees, nor are there Article Processing Charges (APCs). By publishing with us, you are contributing to implementing a healthier business model for academic publishing.