AERA Submits Comments in Response to OSTP Request on the American Research Environment


January 2020

On January 28, AERA submitted comments to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in response to a request for information (RFI) from the Joint Committee on the Research Environment (JCORE) of the National Science and Technology Council. Established in May 2019, JCORE is working in four areas: ensuring rigor and integrity in research; coordinating administrative requirements for federally funded research; strengthening the security of the U.S. science and technology research enterprise; and fostering safe, inclusive, and equitable research environments.

The RFI included questions to gather input on actions that federal agencies can take to enhance the scientific enterprise in each of these four areas. Several of the questions also focused on how agencies can partner with industry, universities, and scientific associations to promote best practices and reduce administrative burden.

“We appreciate the opportunity for the scientific community to inform OSTP’s work to support open science practices and research transparency, ensure research security, and encourage efforts to ensure safe environments for conducting research,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine.

AERA’s comments highlighted examples of actions federal agencies have taken to encourage reproducibility and replicability of research, including the development of data management and sharing policies, and grants from the Institute of Education Sciences for systematic replication studies. In response to a question on ensuring that researchers are aware of ethical principles of integrity, the comments also highlighted the role of the AERA Code of Ethics in promoting ethical practices aligned with open science, including practices with regard to data sharing, conflicts of interest, and reporting of research.

The AERA comments also addressed efforts that the association has undertaken to encourage safe and inclusive research environments in response to questions seeking input on practices and policies. The comments also noted recent actions by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to address harassment.