Replication studies

McMillan, David Article Replication studies Cogent Economics & Finance Provided in Cooperation with: Taylor & Francis Group Suggested Citation: McMillan, David (2017) : Replication studies, Cogent Economics & Finance, ISSN 2332-2039, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, Vol. 5, Iss. 1, pp. 1-, https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2017.1410940 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/194741 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ McMillan, Cogent Economics & Finance (2017), 5: 1410940 https://doi.org/10.1080/23322039.2017.1410940 © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. EDITORIAL Replication studies David McMillan 1 * What is a replication study? A replication study refers to the repetition of a previous piece of research, generally under a different situation i.e. different data or time period, to determine if the key findings from the original study can indeed be applied to such other situations. Why are replication studies important? Replication studies are important as they essentially perform a check on work in order to verify the previous findings and to make sure, for example, they are not specific to one set of data or circumstance. Hence, replication ensures that reported results are valid and reliable, are generalisable and can provide a sound base for future research. Replication studies thus provide robustness to the findings of research work and the interactions that they report. Replication and Cogent Economics & Finance Replication studies are important but are often dismissed by traditional journals as the presented results are “not new”. But that is the purpose of replication work, to confirm or deny the results of previous work but under a new situation (typically, data-set). This drive for new findings has led researchers to exaggerate results in order to seek publication. A 2017 Economic Journal study by Ioannidis, Stanley, and Doucouliagos (2017) suggests that nearly 80% of experimental economics studies “are exaggerated; typically, by a factor of two and with one-third inflated by a factor of four or more”. Cogent Economics & Finance recognises the importance of replication studies. As an indicator of this importance, we now welcome research papers that focus on replication and whose ultimate acceptance depends on the accuracy and thoroughness of the work rather than seeking a “new” result. Cogent Economics & Finance has introduced a new replication studies article type that can be selected upon submission. We hope this will foster a great appreciation of replication studies and their significance, a stronger culture of verification, validity and robustness checking and an encouragement to authors to engage with such work, debate and discuss the best approaches to replication work and understand that an outlet for work of this kind exists. Author details David McMillan 1 E-mail: [email protected] 1 University of Stirling, UK. Citation information Cite this article as: Replication studies, David McMillan, Cogent Economics & Finance(2017), 4: 1410940. Reference Ioannidis, J. P. A., Stanley, T. D., & Doucouliagos, H. (2017). The power of bias in economic research. The Economic Journal, 127, F236–F265. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12461 *Corresponding author: David McMillan, University of Stirling, UK E-mail: [email protected] Additional information is available at the end of the article © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Page 1 of 1