Ten simple rules in good research practice for early career researchers

This paper aims to provide early-career researchers with a useful introduction to good research practices.

Good reporting practice for thermophysical and thermochemical property measurements (IUPAC Technical Report)

Scientific projects frequently involve measurements of thermophysical, thermochemical, and other related properties of chemical compounds and materials. These measured property data have significant potential value for the scientific community, but incomplete and inaccurate reporting often hampers their utilization. The present IUPAC Technical Report summarizes the needs of chemical engineers and researchers as consumers of these data and shows how publishing practices can improve information transfer. In the Report, general principles of Good Reporting Practice are developed together with examples illustrating typical cases of reporting issues. Adoption of these principles will improve the quality, reproducibility, and usefulness of experimental data, bring a better level of consistency to results, and increase the efficiency and impact of research. Closely related to Good Reporting Practice, basic elements of Good Research Practice are also introduced with a goal to reduce the number of ambiguities and unresolved problems within the thermophysical property data domain.

Is Reflexivity Enough? Addressing Reflexive Embodiment, Power, and Whiteness in Sport Management Research

In this article, the authors drew from the epistemological and methodological considerations of neighboring social science fields (i.e., counseling psychology, education, sociology, and women’s studies), which suggest a reevaluation of reflexive research practice(s). In discussing the implications this reevaluation may have for future sport management research, the authors contend that such dialogue may encourage scholars to understand that, while adopting a reflexive approach is good research practice, it may also mean taking a closer look at how our biases, epistemologies, identities, and values are shaped by whiteness and dominant ways of knowing and, in turn, serve to affect our research practice. Thus, this may allow all researchers, with explicit consideration for those in positions of conceptual, empirical, and methodological, as well as cultural and racial, power, to acknowledge and work toward a more meaningful point of consciousness in conducting sport management research.

Using normative ethics for building a good evaluation of research practices: towards the assessment of researcher’s virtues

In this paper, we propose the adoption of moral philosophy and in particular normative ethics, to clarify the concept of “good” evaluation of “research practices”. Using MacIntyre (1985)’s notion of a practice we argue that research is a form of social practice. As a result of this characterization, we claim that research practice typically requires three typologies of researcher: the leader, the good researcher and the honest researcher. Reflecting on what is a “good” research practice and on what is the role of researchers in it provides insight into some aspects of both the self-assessment process and how this promotes individual improvement. Moreover, this kind of reflection helps us to describe the functions (missions) of the research practices. A “good” evaluation should take into account all the building constituents of a “good” research practice and should be able to discriminate between good and bad research practices, while enforcing the functions of good research practices. We believe that these reflections may be the starting point for a paradigm shift in the evaluation of research practices which replaces an evaluation centred on products with an evaluation focused on the functions of these practices. In the last sections of the paper, we introduce and discuss an important aspect for the implementation of the proposed framework. This relates to the assessment of the virtues of researchers involved in a good research practice. Some examples of questions and preliminary items to include in a questionnaire for the assessment of Virtues in Research Practices are also provided.

Feminism as an Evolving Culture of Inclusion and Affirmation: A Review of Contemporary Feminist Research from Theory to Practice

In Contemporary Feminist Research from Theory to Practice, Dr. Patricia Leavy and Dr. Anne Harris (2019) translate feminist principles into good research practice to offer learners of all career stages a concise and lively blueprint for bringing feminism out of the realm of theory and into that of application. Their constant critical thinking and consistent attention to detail orient readers to feminism as a dynamic, continuously evolving culture of inclusion and affirmation.

Political Realism as Anti-scholastic Practice: Methodological Lessons from Muckraking Journalism

What does the trend of “realism” in political theory portend, if anything, for how social and political scientists do their work? We can best see where realism’s rubber hits the road by re-examining the methodological comparison between political science and political journalism, according to which the academic field has long harbored assumptions of its own superiority. When the comparison between these two approaches to knowledge about politics is explicitly made, political science is typically justified by reference to distinctive (and higher) purposes and methods. Here, we reconsider conventional assumptions by reconstructing the journalistic practices and methodological reflections of two early figures in the American muckraking tradition, Lincoln Steffens and R. S. Baker. While their purposes were similar to those upheld by advocates of a publicly engaged political science, their methods, somewhat more surprisingly, are also applicable to the academic profession. Several anti-scholastic lessons on method—relevant to qualitative, quantitative, and interpretive approaches alike—emerge from the muckrakers’ example. The realist movement in political theory is congruent with the proposition that political science’s superiority complex is less easily defended and more obstructive to good research practice than even the most civically engaged researchers commonly assume.