IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pbio00/2005468.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Meta-research: Why research on research matters

Author

Listed:
  • John P A Ioannidis

Abstract

Meta-research is the study of research itself: its methods, reporting, reproducibility, evaluation, and incentives. Given that science is the key driver of human progress, improving the efficiency of scientific investigation and yielding more credible and more useful research results can translate to major benefits. The research enterprise grows very fast. Both new opportunities for knowledge and innovation and new threats to validity and scientific integrity emerge. Old biases abound, and new ones continuously appear as novel disciplines emerge with different standards and challenges. Meta-research uses an interdisciplinary approach to study, promote, and defend robust science. Major disruptions are likely to happen in the way we pursue scientific investigation, and it is important to ensure that these disruptions are evidence based.

Suggested Citation

  • John P A Ioannidis, 2018. "Meta-research: Why research on research matters," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-6, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:2005468
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2005468
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005468
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2005468&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pbio.2005468?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shareen A Iqbal & Joshua D Wallach & Muin J Khoury & Sheri D Schully & John P A Ioannidis, 2016. "Reproducible Research Practices and Transparency across the Biomedical Literature," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, January.
    2. Enrique Orduna-Malea & Juan M. Ayllón & Alberto Martín-Martín & Emilio Delgado López-Cózar, 2015. "Methods for estimating the size of Google Scholar," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 104(3), pages 931-949, September.
    3. Daniele Fanelli, 2009. "How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 4(5), pages 1-11, May.
    4. Wang, Yuandi & Hu, Ruifeng & Liu, Meijun, 2017. "The geotemporal demographics of academic journals from 1950 to 2013 according to Ulrich’s database," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 655-671.
    5. Michail Kovanis & Raphaël Porcher & Philippe Ravaud & Ludovic Trinquart, 2016. "The Global Burden of Journal Peer Review in the Biomedical Literature: Strong Imbalance in the Collective Enterprise," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(11), pages 1-14, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ioannou, Petros & Giuliano, Genevieve & Dessouky, Maged & Chen, Pengfei & Dexter, Sue, 2020. "Freight Load Balancing and Efficiencies in Alternative Fuel Freight Modes," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt3ns4b894, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    2. Simone Turchetti & Roberto Lalli, 2020. "Envisioning a “science diplomacy 2.0”: on data, global challenges, and multi-layered networks," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Salandra, Rossella & Criscuolo, Paola & Salter, Ammon, 2021. "Directing scientists away from potentially biased publications: the role of systematic reviews in health care," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(1).
    2. Lin Zhang & Yuanyuan Shang & Ying Huang & Gunnar Sivertsen, 2022. "Gender differences among active reviewers: an investigation based on publons," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(1), pages 145-179, January.
    3. Moustafa, Khaled, 2018. "Don't fall in common science pitfall!," FrenXiv ycjha, Center for Open Science.
    4. Masselus, Lise & Petrik, Christina & Ankel-Peters, Jörg, 2024. "Lost in the Design Space? Construct Validity in the Microfinance Literature," OSF Preprints nwp8k_v1, Center for Open Science.
    5. Love, Peter E.D. & Ika, Lavagnon A. & Ahiaga-Dagbui, Dominic D., 2019. "On de-bunking ‘fake news’ in a post truth era: Why does the Planning Fallacy explanation for cost overruns fall short?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 397-408.
    6. Jeremy Hall & Ben R. Martin, 2019. "Towards a Taxonomy of Academic Misconduct: The Case of Business School Research," SPRU Working Paper Series 2019-02, SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School.
    7. Kartal, Melis & Tremewan, James, 2018. "An offer you can refuse: The effect of transparency with endogenous conflict of interest," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 44-55.
    8. Robert J Warren II & Joshua R King & Charlene Tarsa & Brian Haas & Jeremy Henderson, 2017. "A systematic review of context bias in invasion biology," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-12, August.
    9. Antonio Páez, 2021. "Open spatial sciences: an introduction," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 467-476, October.
    10. Jasper Brinkerink, 2023. "When Shooting for the Stars Becomes Aiming for Asterisks: P-Hacking in Family Business Research," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(2), pages 304-343, March.
    11. Frederique Bordignon, 2020. "Self-correction of science: a comparative study of negative citations and post-publication peer review," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(2), pages 1225-1239, August.
    12. Hensel, Przemysław G., 2019. "Supporting replication research in management journals: Qualitative analysis of editorials published between 1970 and 2015," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 45-57.
    13. Jacques Muthusi & Samuel Mwalili & Peter Young, 2019. "%svy_logistic_regression: A generic SAS macro for simple and multiple logistic regression and creating quality publication-ready tables using survey or non-survey data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-14, September.
    14. Simone Belli & Carlos Gonzalo-Penela, 2020. "Science, research, and innovation infospheres in Google results of the Ibero-American countries," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(2), pages 635-653, May.
    15. Bergemann, Dirk & Ottaviani, Marco, 2021. "Information Markets and Nonmarkets," CEPR Discussion Papers 16459, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Gary Charness & David Masclet & Marie Claire Villeval, 2014. "The Dark Side of Competition for Status," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(1), pages 38-55, January.
    17. Brian Fabo & Martina Jancokova & Elisabeth Kempf & Lubos Pastor, 2020. "Fifty Shades of QE: Conflicts of Interest in Economic Research," Working Papers 2020-128, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    18. Bruce B. Svare, 2020. "A Cautionary Tale for Psychology and Higher Education in Asia: Following Western Practices of Incentivising Scholarship May Have Negative Outcomes," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 32(1), pages 94-121, March.
    19. Harrison, Mark, 2009. "Forging Success : Soviet Managers and False Accounting, 1943 to 1962," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 909, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    20. Martín-Martín, Alberto & Orduna-Malea, Enrique & Thelwall, Mike & Delgado López-Cózar, Emilio, 2018. "Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus: A systematic comparison of citations in 252 subject categories," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 1160-1177.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pbio00:2005468. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosbiology (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.