Guided by the mission to foster community-driven stakeholder development, TIER2 has launched its Pilot activities campaign #TIER2Pilots. These eight activities, co-designed with the project’s stakeholders, aim to revolutionise reproducibility-related tools and practices across the research lifecycle.

For the upcoming weeks, we will be sharing insights into each Pilot's journey, starting with Pilot 8 – An Editorial Reference Handbook.  

The goal of Pilot 8 is to co-create and evaluate an Editorial Reference Handbook designed to foster a shared understanding of what is required to assist reproducibility and FAIRness. While some journals have internal guidance on promoting and enabling reproducible and FAIR data, there is little consensus among publishers. The planned co-creation and test of an Editiorial Reference Handbook will help operationalise data checks to assist reproducibility and provide editors with a harmonised set of data checks. 

Highlighted as a key need during a TIER2 publisher workshop, the Handbook will blend two main components. A structured section will include educational and actionable checks created through the analysis and integration of existing practices. A narrative component with a general framework will help improve internal processes, defined by describing an ideal process where checks should be applied. 

The Handbook aims to facilitate the implementation of the journal data policy by:

1) providing journals with existing internal guidelines with a resource to assess and enhance their current methods;

2) offering journals without such guidelines a chance to establish their own procedures.

This intervention is designed to assist not only the editorial teams handling submissions but also to support reviewers and authors in understanding the requirements for adhering to the journal data policy, as well as developers in tailoring their services for publishers. 

Starting in January 2024, the Pilot includes representatives of Cambridge University Press, Cell Press, EMBO Press, F1000 (Taylor & Francis), GigaScience Press, Lancet, Oxford University Press, PLOS, Springer Nature, Wiley. The Pilot will be led by Allyson Lister and Susanna-Assunta Sansone from the University of Oxford's Data Readiness Group, alongside Rebecca Taylor-Grant, Liz Allen and Matthew Cannon from Taylor and Francis. Christopher Osborne from the Data Readiness Group will be leading the intervention component. 

Material about this Pilot will be progressively shared and linked from the Pilot’s TIER2 page. Get in touch with the Pilot leads and learn more about the rest of the Pilots here.