Open Science Practices

Transparency Guidelines

We take good, transparent, reproducible, and open science very seriously. This means that all published papers will have underwent screening regarding to what extent they have fulfilled Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP Guidelines). The TOP Guidelines outline eight modular standards that can be implemented at three different levels (with Level I being the least, and Level III the most rigorous option):

Modular Standard	Implementation	Level I
1. Citation Standards → How to implement	Journal describes citation of data in guidelines to authors with clear rules and examples.	✓
2. Data Transparency → How to implement	Article states whether data are available, and, if so, where to access them.	✓
3. Code (Analytical Methods) Transparency → How to implement	Article states whether code is available, and, if so, where to access it.	✓
4. Research Materials Transparency → How to implement	Article states whether materials are available, and, if so, where to access them.	✓
5. Design and Analysis Transparency → How to implement	Journal articulates design transparency standards.	✓
6. Preregistration of Studies → How to implement	Article states whether preregistration of study exists, and, if so, where to access it.	✓
7. Preregistration of Analysis Plans → How to implement	Article states whether preregistration of study exists, and, if so, where to access it.	✓
8. Replication → How to implement	Journal encourages submission of replication studies.	✓

The guidelines summarized above concern any paper published in SOTRAP that presents empirical data (whether quantitive or qualitative). Data, code, materials, and other documents should be safely and openly stored at the PsychArchives repository. Upon submission of a paper, authors will have to confirm that they have included appropriate statements (e.g., about the availability of data, code, materials, other documents, preregistrations) within their papers, and all papers will be checked regarding their adherence to the journal's adopted TOP standards outlined above. Authors should thus take great care to ensure that their papers meet those standards. Papers that do not meet the standards cannot be published in SOTRAP.

Implementation Guidelines for Authors

1. Citation Standards

All data, program code and other methods should be appropriately cited. Such materials should be recognized as original intellectual contributions and afforded recognition through citation. Articles will not be published until the citations conform to these standards.

All data sets and program code used in a publication should be cited in the text and listed in the reference section.
References for data sets and program code should include a persistent identifier, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a text or data set. Persistent identifiers are assigned to data sets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS).
Data set citation example: Campbell, Angus, and Robert L. Kahn. American National Election Study, 1948. ICPSR07218v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1999. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v3.

2. Data Transparency

The policy of Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention is to publish papers where authors indicate whether the data, methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research will be made available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure.

Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they will or will not make their data available to other researchers.
If an author agrees to make data available, the author must specify where that material will be available.

3. Code Transparency

The policy of Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention is to publish papers where authors indicate whether the methods used in the analysis will be made available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure.

Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they will or will not analytic methods (code) available to other researchers.
If an author agrees to make materials available, the author must specify where that material will be available.

4. Materials Transparency

The policy of Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention is to publish papers where authors indicate whether the materials used to conduct the research will be made available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure.

Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they will or will not make their study materials available to other researchers.
If an author agrees to make materials available, the author must specify where that material will be available.

5. Design Transparency

The policy of the Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention is to publish papers where authors follow standards for disclosing key aspects of the research design and data analysis. Authors are encouraged to review the standards available for many research applications from https://www.equator-network.org/ and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications.

6/7. Study and Analysis Preregistration

The policy of Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention is to publish papers where authors indicate whether or not the conducted research was preregistered with an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry (e.g., https://psycharchives.org, https://aspredicted.org, https://clinicaltrials.gov, https://www.socialscienceregistry.org, https://osf.io, https://ridie.3ieimpact.org). Preregistration of studies involves registering the study design, variables, and treatment conditions. Including an analysis plan involves specification of sequence of analyses or the statistical model that will be reported.

Authors must, in acknowledgments or the first footnote, indicate if they did or did not preregister the research with or without an analysis plan in an independent, institutional registry.
If an author did preregister the research with an analysis plan, the author must:
1. confirm in the text that the study was registered prior to conducting the research with links to the timestamped preregistrations at the institutional registry, and that the preregistration adheres to the disclosure requirements of the institutional registry or those required for the preregistered badge with analysis plans maintained by the Center for Open Science.
2. Report all preregistered analyses in the text, or, if there were changes in the analysis plan following preregistration, those changes must be disclosed with explanation for the changes.
3. Clearly distinguish in text analyses that were preregistered from those that were not, such as having separate sections in the results for confirmatory and exploratory analyses.

8. Replication

The policy of Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention is to encourage submission of replication studies, particularly of research published in this journal. Note: If the journal will publish replication studies in a separate section, or as online-only in case of print journals, that should be made explicit.