TOP Guidelines

Overview

The TOP Guidelines (Transparency and Openness Promotion) are a modular framework developed by COS that defines eight standards for transparency in scientific publications, each at three levels of implementation: disclosure, requirement, and verification. The standards cover data citation, data transparency, analytic code transparency, materials transparency, design and analysis transparency, pre-registration, pre-registration of analysis plans, and replication. Journals and funders can adopt any combination of standards at any level, making the framework applicable across disciplines and publication models. Over 5,000 journals and organisations have endorsed or implemented TOP Guidelines, making it one of the most widely adopted transparency frameworks in science. The TOP Factor database tracks journal-level compliance.

Connections

• producedBy: COS (TOP Guidelines developed and maintained by COS)
• relatedTo: cOAlition S (TOP Guidelines are widely adopted alongside Plan S requirements as a complementary transparency framework)
• relatedTo: DORA (TOP Guidelines operationalise research transparency norms that complement DORA’s emphasis on quality-based rather than metric-based assessment)

Resources

• https://topfactor.org (journal compliance database)
• https://www.cos.io/initiatives/top-guidelines
• https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab2374 (Nosek et al. 2015, Science, original paper)