Gambling researchers’ use and views of open science principles and practices: a brief report

Scientists across disciplines have begun to implement ‘open science’ principles and practices, which are designed to enhance the quality, transparency, and replicability of scientific research. Yet, studies examining the use of open science practices in social science fields such as psychology and economics show that awareness and use of such practices often is low. In gambling studies research, no studies to date have empirically investigated knowledge of and use of open science practices. In the present study, we collected survey data about awareness and use of open science practices from 86 gambling studies research stakeholders who had attended a major international gambling studies conference in May 2019. We found that – as hypothesized – a minority of gambling research stakeholders reported: 1) either some or extensive experience using open science research practices in general, and 2) either some or regular experience using specific open science practices, including study pre-registration, open materials/code, open data, and pre-print archiving. Most respondents indicated that replication was important for all studies in gambling research, and that genetic, neuroscience, and lab-based game characteristic studies were areas most in need of replication. Our results have important implications for open science education initiatives and for contemporary research methodology in gambling studies.