A Brief Reflection on Open Science

In the past years, the psychological community witnessed an outbreak of failures to replicate well-known psychological findings. These failures have undermined the credibility of the psychological field and have shaken the trust of practicioners and the public to psychological reseach. Some have called this period the replication crisis (e.g., Maxwell, Lau, & Howard, 2015). Others have termed this period the credibility revolution because these failures have caused psychological scientists to critically evaluate their used methodology and statistical apparatus and search for ways to improve them (e.g., Vazire, 2018). In this reflection, we give a short historical overview of important events that likely caused this credibility revolution. Furthermore, we describe a possible solution to address these failures to replicate psychological findings: Open Science. We discuss the basic idea behind Open Science and provide several recommendations for psychological scientists when designing and conducting psychological studies.