Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines: What are they?

In 2021, several APA journals adopted the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, updating their requirements for manuscripts submitted to the journal. Since then, an increasing number of APA journals have chosen to implement the guidelines. What does this mean for authors?

In support of increased transparency in publishing, journals that adopt TOP specify the ways in which authors should comply with eight specific domains of research planning and reporting. These domains include:

1. Citation standards: rules around citation for data and materials
2. Data transparency: rules around data sharing (e.g., reporting, posting to a repository)
3. Analytics methods (code) transparency: rules around code sharing
4. Research materials transparency: rules around materials sharing
5. Design and analysis transparency: details around design transparency or journal reporting standards
6. Study design preregistration: details around preregistration of studies
7. Analysis plan preregistration: details around preregistration of analysis plans
8. Replication: details around the publication of replication studies

To implement the guidelines in their journal, editors first select the level of compliance required for their specific publication. Editors may choose to implement one of three levels of compliance for each of the eight domains.

The three levels include:

1. Level 1: Disclosure—The article must disclose whether or not the materials are available.
2. Level 2: Requirement—The article must share materials when legally and ethically permitted (or disclose the legal and/or ethical restriction when not permitted).
3. Level 3: Verification—A third party must verify that the standard is met.

For more information on the requirements for each level of compliance per standard, please visit the Center for Open Science webpageopens in new window.

Authors can find details about the TOP Guidelines in the journal’s manuscript submission instructions. As of fall 2023, authors must disclose TOP compliance only in the Methods section of their manuscript.

Several APA editors have commented on their decision to implement the guidelines. According to editor-in-chief of the Journal of Applied Psychology, Lillian Ebyopens in new window, “following the TOP guidelines helps ensure that other researchers understand the study context, procedures, and materials” which in turn makes the published research “more interpretable and useful for readers, both in terms of translating research into practice and extending scientific ideas.” Eby specifies that, at her journal, the intent is not for reviewers to add to their workload by examining open science information in great detail, but to focus, as always, on the merits and rigor of the submitted work.

Mark Beauchampopens in new window, PhD, editor-in-chief of Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, notes that the adoption of the TOP Guidelines at his journal corresponds to “a formalized advancement of open science practices.” Such practices, according to the Editor, include “strategies that are designed to improve transparency; optimize the integrity of methodological and analytic practices; and promote access to materials, code, and data with a view to enhance confidence in the robustness of research evidence.”

Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Educational Psychology, Panayiota Kendeou, PhD, states that “with the adoption of Level 1 [TOP] guidelines, [the journal] now also invites the submission of registered reports,” which “implement the highest standards of transparency and open science practices.” The editors of the journal are “particularly interested in RRs for intervention research,” an emphasis that aligns with the “role of intervention research in identifying causal mechanisms and evidence-based practices in education, requirements from funders to preregister large-scale intervention studies, and the need to reduce bias against null or negative results in intervention research.”

Authors may wonder about the difference between APA Style JARS and the TOP Guidelines.

In essence, adherence to APA Style JARS is a component of TOP. The TOP domain called “design and analysis transparency” recommends or requires adherence to reporting standards like the Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS). While both JARS and TOP promote transparency, JARS is much more detailed, as it entails reporting on study design and methodology.

The TOP Guidelines were developed by the Center for Open Science in 2015opens in new window. In line with the organization’s support of transparency in research, APA is one of the 5,000 signatories of the guidelines. For a list of APA journals that have implemented the TOP Guidelines so far, please visit our TOP announcement page.

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