Nine quick tips for open meta-analyses.

Open science principles are revolutionizing the transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility of research. Meta-analysis has become a key technique for synthesizing data across studies in a principled way; however, its impact is contingent on adherence to open science practices. Here, we outline 9 quick tips for open meta-analyses, aimed at guiding researchers to maximize the reach and utility of their findings. We advocate for outlining preregistering clear protocols, opting for open tools and software, and the use of version control systems to ensure transparency and facilitate collaboration. We further emphasize the importance of reproducibility, for example, by sharing search syntax and analysis scripts, and discuss the benefits of planning for dynamic updating to enable living meta-analyses. We also recommend publication in open-access formats, as well as open data, open code, and open access publication. We close by encouraging active promotion of research findings to bridge the gap between complex syntheses and public discourse, and provide a detailed submission checklist to equip researchers, reviewers and journal editors with a structured approach to conducting and reporting open meta-analyses.

Reassessing the Functional Significance of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent Signal Variability.

BOLD signal variability (SDBOLD) has emerged as a unique measure of the adaptive properties of neural systems that facilitate fast, stable responding, based on claims that SDBOLD is independent of mean BOLD signal (meanBOLD) and is a powerful predictor of behavioral performance. We challenge these two claims. First, the apparent independence of SDBOLD and meanBOLD may reflect the presence of deactivations; we hypothesize that although SDBOLD may not be related to raw meanBOLD, it will be linearly related to "absolute" meanBOLD. Second, the observed relationship between SDBOLD and performance may be an artifact of using fixed-length trials longer than RTs. Such designs provide opportunities to toggle between on- and off-task states, and fast responders likely engage in more frequent state-switching, thereby artificially elevating SDBOLD. We hypothesize that SDBOLD will be higher and more strongly related to performance when using such fixed-length trials relative to self-paced trials that terminate upon a response. We test these two hypotheses in an fMRI study using blocks of fixed-length or self-paced trials. Results confirmed both hypotheses: (1) SDBOLD was robustly related with absolute meanBOLD, and (2) toggling between on- and off-task states during fixed-length trials reliably contributed to SDBOLD. Together, these findings suggest that a reappraisal of the functional significance of SDBOLD as a unique marker of cognitive performance is warranted.

Ten simple rules for designing and conducting undergraduate replication projects.

Conducting a replication study is a valuable way for undergraduate students to learn about the scientific process and gain research experience. By promoting the evaluation of existing studies to confirm their reliability, replications play a unique, though often underappreciated, role in the scientific enterprise. Involving students early in this process can help make replication mainstream among the new generation of scientists. Beyond their benefit to science, replications also provide an invaluable learning ground for students, from encouraging the development of critical thinking to emphasizing the importance of details and honing research skills. In this piece, we outline 10 simple rules for designing and conducting undergraduate replication projects, from conceptualization to implementation and dissemination. We hope that these guidelines can help educators provide students with a meaningful and constructive pedagogical experience, without compromising the scientific value of the replication project, therefore ensuring robust, valuable contributions to our understanding of the world.

Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood.

Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate.

XFEL Microcrystallography of Self-Assembling Silver n-Alkanethiolates.

New synthetic hybrid materials and their increasing complexity have placed growing demands on crystal growth for single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis. Unfortunately, not all chemical systems are conducive to the isolation of single crystals for traditional characterization. Here, small-molecule serial femtosecond crystallography (smSFX) at atomic resolution (0.833 Å) is employed to characterize microcrystalline silver n-alkanethiolates with various alkyl chain lengths at X-ray free electron laser facilities, resolving long-standing controversies regarding the atomic connectivity and odd-even effects of layer stacking. smSFX provides high-quality crystal structures directly from the powder of the true unknowns, a capability that is particularly useful for systems having notoriously small or defective crystals. We present crystal structures of silver n-butanethiolate (C4), silver n-hexanethiolate (C6), and silver n-nonanethiolate (C9). We show that an odd-even effect originates from the orientation of the terminal methyl group and its role in packing efficiency. We also propose a secondary odd-even effect involving multiple mosaic blocks in the crystals containing even-numbered chains, identified by selected-area electron diffraction measurements. We conclude with a discussion of the merits of the synthetic preparation for the preparation of microdiffraction specimens and compare the long-range order in these crystals to that of self-assembled monolayers.

Implementing code review in the scientific workflow: Insights from ecology and evolutionary biology.

Code review increases reliability and improves reproducibility of research. As such, code review is an inevitable step in software development and is common in fields such as computer science. However, despite its importance, code review is noticeably lacking in ecology and evolutionary biology. This is problematic as it facilitates the propagation of coding errors and a reduction in reproducibility and reliability of published results. To address this, we provide a detailed commentary on how to effectively review code, how to set up your project to enable this form of review and detail its possible implementation at several stages throughout the research process. This guide serves as a primer for code review, and adoption of the principles and advice here will go a long way in promoting more open, reliable, and transparent ecology and evolutionary biology.

Genomics might not be the solution, but epistemic validity remains a challenge in the social sciences.

We sympathize with many of the points Burt makes in challenging the value of genetics to advance our understanding of social science. Here, we discuss how recent reflections on epistemic validity in the behavioral sciences can further contribute to a reappraisal of the role of sociogenomics to explain and predict human traits, aptitudes, and achievement.

Why don't we share data and code? Perceived barriers and benefits to public archiving practices.

The biological sciences community is increasingly recognizing the value of open, reproducible and transparent research practices for science and society at large. Despite this recognition, many researchers fail to share their data and code publicly. This pattern may arise from knowledge barriers about how to archive data and code, concerns about its reuse, and misaligned career incentives. Here, we define, categorize and discuss barriers to data and code sharing that are relevant to many research fields. We explore how real and perceived barriers might be overcome or reframed in the light of the benefits relative to costs. By elucidating these barriers and the contexts in which they arise, we can take steps to mitigate them and align our actions with the goals of open science, both as individual scientists and as a scientific community.

Improving the generalizability of infant psychological research: The ManyBabies model.

Yarkoni's analysis clearly articulates a number of concerns limiting the generalizability and explanatory power of psychological findings, many of which are compounded in infancy research. ManyBabies addresses these concerns via a radically collaborative, large-scale and open approach to research that is grounded in theory-building, committed to diversification, and focused on understanding sources of variation.

Assessment of the Use of Multi-Channel Organic Electrodes to Record ENG on Small Nerves: Application to Phrenic Nerve Burst Detection.

Effective closed-loop neuromodulation relies on the acquisition of appropriate physiological control variables and the delivery of an appropriate stimulation signal. In particular, electroneurogram (ENG) data acquired from a set of electrodes applied at the surface of the nerve may be used as a potential control variable in this field. Improved electrode technologies and data processing methods are clearly needed in this context. In this work, we evaluated a new electrode technology based on multichannel organic electrodes (OE) and applied a signal processing chain in order to detect respiratory-related bursts from the phrenic nerve. Phrenic ENG (pENG) were acquired from nine Long Evans rats in situ preparations. For each preparation, a 16-channel OE was applied around the phrenic nerve's surface and a suction electrode was applied to the cut end of the same nerve. The former electrode provided input multivariate pENG signals while the latter electrode provided the gold standard for data analysis. Correlations between OE signals and that from the gold standard were estimated. Signal to noise ratio (SNR) and ROC curves were built to quantify phrenic bursts detection performance. Correlation score showed the ability of the OE to record high-quality pENG. Our methods allowed good phrenic bursts detection. However, we failed to demonstrate a spatial selectivity from the multiple pENG recorded with our OE matrix. Altogether, our results suggest that highly flexible and biocompatible multi-channel electrode may represent an interesting alternative to metallic cuff electrodes to perform nerve bursts detection and/or closed-loop neuromodulation.