How to Use

The framework has two main parts. The first part lists research stages and highlights the issues that can happen at each stage (or substage, if relevant). By clicking on the stage (or substage), you will be able to see substages (if relevant), as well as the short description of the importance of that particular research stage to the research quality. This window will also include two buttons – one called ‘Evidence’ and the other called ‘Solution’. ‘Evidence’ will list the current estimates of the extent of the issue for different fields, if these exist. ‘Solutions’ will lead you to the solutions that can be used to remove, or reduce the Issue.

The second part is the Solutions. Solutions are structured into primary and secondary. Primary solutions are those applied by researchers. Secondary solutions are applied by research institutions, funders, or publishers and these enable/encourage/enforce researchers to apply primary solutions. These secondary actions are structured in five categories: infrastructure (e.g. establishing data repositories), education (education and training of researchers), professional support (e.g. statisticians, data stewards etc), incentives (e.g. development of metrics to evaluate researchers by how transparent and robust their research is), and policies.

When you click on a Solution, you will see two buttons. The button ‘Evidence’ lists the evidence for the effectiveness of a solution in solving a related issue at a research stage (for primary solutions), or in increasing the application of primary solutions (for secondary solutions). The button ‘Research stages’ links to the research stages that a particular solutions has an effect on.

Each secondary solution influences one or more primary solutions. Thus, primary and secondary solutions are linked.