Ing. Mgr. Marek Vranka

Institute of communication studies and journalism

Faculty of Social Sciences



ORCID: 0000-0003-3413-9062

OSF profile: osf.io/mk9cg


What was the main stimulus for you to get engaged in Open Science and how has your relation to OS developed?

In 2013, I started to take an interest in replication crisis in psychology and, along with my colleagues Štěpán Bahník and Eva Rubínová, we got involved in the first extensive international replication projects, ManyLabs and RRR: Schooler. Those projects naturally applied the open science procedures such as preregistration of research plans and free sharing of materials, data, and analytical scripts on the OSF platform. Since the closeness and lack of transparency of science created the environment leading to the replication crisis, I perceived the open science practices primarily as a way to the restoration of credibility of research results. Later, I became familiar with the history and other aspects of the open science movement, such as the free access to publications, transparent evaluation of science, or today, the frequently debated openness in the sense of sufficient representation of researchers from various groups in science. ​But for me, open science is still primarily about the transparent conduct of the research itself.​​

Which part of open science practice is your common routine?

In my research, I particularly try to use preregistration and sharing of materials, data, and scripts used in conducted studies. ​Data sharing​, in particular, seems to be a norm and a necessity today, at least in the branches of psychology, economics, and political sciences which are my areas of research interest.  

Why is the openness in science important to you (what are its benefits)?

Open science serves simply to improve quality – a mere possibility that your materials, data, or analyses might be reviewed by someone else can serve as a guarantee that their author would be more careful in the course of their preparation and documentation. Another advantage can be that researchers can more easily try to replicate the existing studies or continue and expand them. And last but not least, wider openness increases the risk of revealing scientific misconduct and would discourage at least part of potential fraudsters. 

What would you recommend to your colleagues if they consider applying open science principles in their research practice?

The text 7 Easy Steps to Open Science can be a good introduction and a source of inspiration. My recommendation is to create an account on the OSF platform and to start using this platform for collaboration, storing materials and data, and preregistration of studies. Preregistration make​s​ researchers consider in detail what and how is to be measured and analyzed. This may help to reveal problems at early stages and not later when the data has been collected and it would be difficult to correct anything. 

What obstacles should be overcome in order to make open science a regular practice?

What I consider as one of the main barriers is the persisting emphasis on the results in the evaluation of researchers. Unless the process is evaluated more than the results, there will be little incentive ​to ​improve the process – and open science is more about a better process, sometimes at the expense of ​the number of​ publications simply because, for example, data could not be easily massaged in order to achieve significant results. 

What does open science mean to you in one sentence?

Open science is simply the science that is closer to what science should be like so that we can trust its results more. 


Last change: January 17, 2023 09:54 
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