Implemented Practices
Open Science agreement for Ph.D. students
Since the winter term 2019/2020, all dissertation projects at the Department of Psychology are required to draft a dissertation agreement between Ph.D. students and their primary supervisor. Such an agreement aims to provide planning security, transparency, and structure for everybody involved.
The OSIP provides a template for the agreement, which also includes a commitment to self-set Open Science practices. This agreement was approved by the Leitungskollegium of the Department. The agreement can easily be adapted by each supervisor/supervisee tandem. It consists of two parts:
1. The agreement itself, which is supposed to be filled out and signed by both the primary supervisor and the Ph.D. student at the start of the dissertation. One part of the agreement is to talk about the planned open science practices in the dissertation project: Will hypotheses and analysis plans be preregistered? Is it planned to provide the raw data as open data? etc.
2. A disclosure form that is supposed to be handed in along with the final dissertation. This form asks which open science practices have been implemented, separately for each study of the dissertation. If, for example, open data is provided, a link should be provided. If not, it is (optionally) possible to justify why not.
Download: Promotionsvereinbarung Department Psychologie (Version 2019-07-22)
Open Science agreement for thesis students
Similarly to the dissertation agreement, the OSIP also provides a voluntary Open Science agreement for Bachelor or Master theses. This agreement is an important signal that Open Science practices can and should be implemented at all levels of academia. Filling it out encourages thesis students and supervisors to discuss which Open Science practices are suitable for the project and to commit to these practices.
The template provided below consists of two parts:
1. The agreement itself asks about planned Open Science practices (e.g., will hypotheses be preregistered?). It is supposed to be filled out at the beginning of a thesis project by both, the supervisor and the thesis student.
2. A disclosure form that is supposed to be handed in along with the final thesis. This form asks which open science practices have been implemented.
Download: Vereinbarung für Abschlussarbeiten Department Psychologie (Version 2021-04-23).
Transparent grading scheme for empirical theses
The Department for Psychology has repeatedly developed grading guidelines for Bachelor and Master theses, which help supervisors in giving fair and objective grades. Supervisors are encouraged to share these guidelines with thesis students to make the grading process transparent. In their latest version, these grading guidelines contain an additional section on Open Science practices (i.e., preregistration & open material).
Core curriculum for the B.Sc. course "Empirisches Praktikum"
In December 2016, the Department of Psychology passed a core curriculum for the course “Empirisches Praktikum (Empra)”, which is part of the B.Sc. Psychology at LMU. The course mimics the complete process of empirical research (i.e., from building hypotheses to collecting and analyzing data to reporting results) and is, thus, an ideal opportunity to establish open science practices early on in students’ academic lives. The curriculum prescribes four topics to be covered in all Empra courses: sample size planning for statistical power, preregistration, open data, and reproducible code.
Find more details here (in German).
Recognizing Open Research in our hiring policy
Since December 2015, the Department of Psychology of LMU Munich incorporates an Open Science statement into all professorship job announcements. This statement emphasizes the Department’s commitment to responsible research and asks applicants to write a short statement about their Open Science practices. As an example, the very first paragraph read:
"Our department embraces the values of open science and strives for replicable and reproducible research. For this goal we support transparent research with open data, open materials, and study pre-registration. Candidates are asked to describe in what way they already pursued and plan to pursue these goals."
By including this statement, our department aims to communicate core values of good scientific practice and to attract excellent researchers who aim for transparent and credible research.
See also, this blog post about the new policy.