ReproducibiliTea
Overview
ReproducibiliTea is a grassroots journal club initiative for open and reproducible research, founded in spring 2018 at the University of Oxford by Sophia Crüwell, Amy Orben, and Sam Parsons. It provides a free, low-barrier model for local journal clubs to discuss open science, reproducibility, and the replication crisis, with no administrative approval or financial resources required to start a chapter. From its origin at Oxford it has grown to 128 institutions across 31 countries as of the most recent available figures. The initiative is entirely volunteer-run and predominantly early-career researcher led.
Model and Activities
Each local chapter selects papers broadly relevant to research improvement and the replication crisis and discusses them in regular informal meetings. The model is intentionally lightweight: materials are freely available and adaptable, and chapters run independently without central coordination beyond the shared framework. ReproducibiliTea also produces a podcast highlighting open research work by early career researchers. National reproducibility networks within GFRN use ReproducibiliTea chapters as a community engagement mechanism.
Resources
- https://reproducibilitea.org
- https://soundcloud.com/reproducibilitea (podcast)
- https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02842-8 (Orben 2019, Nature, founding perspective)