Open science practices among early-career human-computer interaction researchers in the US

Abstract

Many fields of science have heightened introspection in the wake of concerns around reproducibility and replicability of published findings. In recent years, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community too has worked to implement policy changes and mainstream open science practices. Our work investigates early-career HCI researchers’ perceptions of open science and engagement with best practices through 18 semi-structured interviews. In particular, we study researchers with mixed methods or qualitative research backgrounds. Our findings highlight opportunities and challenges for the adoption of open science practices within HCI. Participants describe barriers such as a lack of incentives, cultural resistance, and concerns about intellectual property. However, they also identify positive trends, such as increased awareness of open science practices, evolving norms around peer review, and perceived benefits such as enhanced visibility, transparency, diversity, accessibility, collaboration, and research credibility. We offer recommendations to address these barriers and to promote transparency and openness in HCI. We suggest that relatively small changes at major conferences like the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) could meaningfully impact community norms. While our findings provide valuable insights about the open science practices of early-career HCI researchers, their applicability is limited to the USA only. In addition, interviews rely on self-reported data and are therefore subject to, e.g., recall bias. Future studies should include HCI researchers with different levels of experience and from various countries.