Strengthening Replication and Reproducibility of NIH-funded Research

NIH is launching a new, agency-wide initiative to elevate replication and reproducibility studies as foundational to the conduct of gold standard science. Driving and sustaining culture change will take ideas from and commitment across the research enterprise, and we will be engaging the scientific community in implementing our strategic vision, which will focus on:

• Driving Effective NIH Replication and Reproducibility Efforts: NIH has longstanding replication and reproducibility efforts and will continue investing in its flagship policies, resources, and programs. These include sharing and standardizing data to accelerate biomedical research discovery, making NIH research findings freely and quickly available to the public, and supporting independent replication research to generate best practices and lessons learned.

• Incentivizing Replication and Reproducibility Sciences Across the Research Enterprise: NIH will work with the scientific community to identify innovative approaches that reinforce and incentivize replication and reproducibility across the research enterprise, such as supporting competitions to develop novel reward incentives and recognize champions of rigor. Additionally, NIH will engage researchers in selecting research areas ripe for replication and reproducibility studies.

• Institutionalizing Replication and Reproducibility as a Scientific Discipline: NIH will invest in building and sustaining critical infrastructure to drive and embed replication and reproducibility throughout biomedical research. By establishing a central locus for cutting edge science, current methods and approaches, and a forum for robust debate, NIH will develop and foster the culture for driving gold standard science.

NIH will continue to update this site, including ways to engage and how to get involved. Learn more about NIH’s ongoing replication and reproducibility efforts: