Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A journal declaring TOP Level 2 for data citation and Level 1 for materials transparency.
- Is an instance
A funder requiring TOP-compliant journals for its grantees' outputs.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal's open-data policy described in free text without TOP levels.
- Not an instance
Internal author guidelines without external rating.
Editorial commentary
The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, published by the Center for Open Science and first introduced by Nosek et al. in “Promoting an Open Research Culture” (Science, 2015), are a modular framework journals use to declare and grade their own transparency policies. In their original 2015 form, TOP defines eight standards — Data Citation, Data Transparency, Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency, Research Materials Transparency, Design and Analysis (Reporting) Transparency, Study Pre-registration, Analysis Plan Pre-registration, and Replication — and grades a journal's policy on each standard at one of three increasing levels of stringency, from simple disclosure up to independent verification before publication. A journal is not required to adopt all eight standards or to adopt them at the same level; the framework's purpose is comparability, letting authors, funders, and readers see exactly what a given journal requires rather than relying on vague editorial statements about “supporting open science.”
Individual journals' declared TOP levels are aggregated into the TOP Factor, a per-journal transparency score that has become a reference point distinct from, and intended as an alternative to, impact-factor-style metrics for judging a journal's rigour.
A note on the framework's evolution
Since the original 2015 publication, COS has continued to revise the guidelines; recent iterations have reorganised the eight standards into a structure distinguishing research practices from verification practices, with a more uniform three-level structure across standards. The core purpose — a graded, comparable declaration of a journal's transparency requirements — is unchanged; anyone citing exact current standard names or level definitions for a specific journal policy should check the live guidelines at cos.io rather than relying on the original 2015 wording.
TOP interacts directly with several other terms on this site: its Study Pre-registration and Analysis Plan Pre-registration standards are what a journal's adoption of pre-registration requirements typically implements in practice; its Data and Analytic Methods Transparency standards are what underlie journal policies requiring open data and open code; and full adoption of the Replication standard is closely related to a journal welcoming crowdsourced replication submissions. See CASRAI's guide to the Center for Open Science, TOP Guidelines, and OSF for the full institutional picture.
References
- Nosek et al., 'Promoting an Open Research Culture' (Science, 2015).
- Center for Open Science, TOP Guidelines (cos.io/initiatives/top-guidelines).
Also known as
TOP · Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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