I4R’s Collaboration with Nature Human Behaviour

At the Institute for Replication, our mission has always been simple: make reproduction and replication a normal, scalable part of scientific research.

We are excited to highlight one of our most ambitious collaborations to date—our partnership with Nature Human Behaviour (NHB), a leading interdisciplinary journal published by Springer Nature. This collaboration represents a major step toward embedding reproducibility at the heart of top-tier scientific publishing.

A first-of-its-kind initiative

In January 2024, I4R and NHB launched a large-scale initiative to reproduce and replicate research published in the journal. As outlined in the joint announcement, the goal is straightforward but ambitious: to systematically verify and stress-test findings from papers published since 2023.

This is not just another replication effort. It is, as the publisher describes it, a “first of its kind” initiative for a highly selective multidisciplinary journal.

Why does this matter?

Because even in top journals, reproducibility and replication are rare. By embedding replication into the lifecycle of high-impact publications, this partnership helps shift the norm.

What comes next

The NHB–I4R initiative will generate:

• 100 reproductions and replications of recent NHB papers

• A meta-research paper synthesizing findings from the first phase of the project

• Opportunities for standalone replication publications and post-publication commentary

Perhaps most importantly, it creates a blueprint for how journals and independent organizations can work together to institutionalize reproducibility.

A call to the community

This effort is fundamentally collaborative. Researchers, students, and institutions were all invited to participate and we are now finalizing this project.

If science is to be cumulative, it must also be verifiable.

With this partnership, we are taking a concrete step toward that goal.