Transparency and openness for journals

Transparency and openness are core values of academic research and are essential if new observations and discoveries are to fully contribute to advances in global knowledge. Research articles serve their readers best when they provide sufficient information for new assertions and findings to be properly evaluated and built upon.

Transparency means that readers are able to determine how data and other materials have been created and interpreted by authors, that readers have information about how they can access these materials, and that readers have sufficient information to be able to interpret and re-use the materials. Openness means that the materials are available to other researchers with as few barriers as possible. Together, transparency and openness allow research to be more reproducible.

As a part of Cambridge University Press’s commitment to Open Research, we support journal policies and practices for transparency and openness. We encourage the development and adoption of standards and services that foster greater sharing of data and other materials as a part of research publication. At the same time, we recognise the needs and constraints of the diverse range of research traditions and communities we work with and serve. We are sensitive to the need to balance openness with confidentiality and practicality, while supporting initiatives to improve openness wherever possible.

In this spirit, each journal we publish has the freedom to set its own policies around the transparency and openness of research. Some journals already have strong policies in place, and others are developing theirs. We are working towards all journals that we publish having appropriate policies.

Community initiatives we support

• Transparency and Openness Promotion  (TOP): standards for journal policies on Open Research.
• FAIR principles  (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable): standards for the discoverability and persistence of shared research data.
• San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment  (DORA): developing and promoting best practice in how research is assessed.