The Prevalence of Replications in Psychology
Channel: Center for Open Science
Date: 2023-05-25

Session: The Prevalence of Replications in Psychology

Speaker: Beth Clarke, PhD Candidate, University of Melbourne

Abstract: Despite lip service about replication being a cornerstone of scientific rigor, replications have historically received little real estate in the published literature (Sterling, 1959; Hubbard & Ryan, 2000). It is an open question whether psychology’s replication crisis has led to any changes. We estimated the prevalence of direct replications in the 100 highest-impact psychology journals between 2010 and 2021. In our final sample of 84,834 empirical articles, 0.2% (169 articles) were direct replications. The prevalence of direct replications increased over time. Journals with a policy of considering replication submissions (30% of journals) were about eight times more likely to publish replication studies. Journal impact factors were not associated with the likelihood of publishing replications. Replications are still rare, with a few journals doing most of the heavy lifting – 54 out of 88 journals did not publish any direct replications. Journals’ policies on replications seem to reflect their behavior.