Sociological Science Accelerator (SSA)
Policy on Scientific Integrity
The mission of the Sociological Science Accelerator is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in sociology through large-scale, reproducible, and collaborative research.
This policy establishes the standards that govern how SSA research is designed, conducted, analysed, and reported. It exists to ensure that SSA projects are ethical, transparent, accountable, and scientifically credible.
Core Principles
SSA's scientific integrity rests on five commitments:
- Integrity - We uphold honesty, rigor, and accuracy in all stages of research, including theory, design, data collection, analysis, and reporting.
- Accountability - Members are responsible for the quality and honesty of their contributions. Authorship and contribution records are used to ensure transparency and responsibility.
- Collaboration - SSA research is collective. Members are expected to engage respectfully, share credit fairly, and support an inclusive and cooperative research environment.
- Transparency - SSA projects require registered reports and preregistration, open materials, open code, and open data when ethically and legally possible, along with open-access reporting of results.
- Equity and Inclusion - SSA seeks broad participation across countries, institutions, career stages, and research traditions, and aims to reduce power imbalances in collaborative science.
Practices That Support Scientific Integrity
Examples include:
- Preregistering hypotheses, methods, and analyses when research is confirmatory.
- Sharing data, code, and materials when permitted.
- Accurately reporting methods, results, and limitations.
- Giving proper credit and authorship.
- Raising concerns about errors or misconduct in good faith.
- Welcoming critique and methodological debate in the service of better science.
Practices That Undermine Scientific Integrity
Examples include:
- Fabricating, falsifying, or selectively omitting data.
- Plagiarism or failure to credit others (including undisclosed AI-generated text and data).
- Misrepresenting results or overstating conclusions.
- Conducting research without required ethical approval.
- Suppressing or discouraging legitimate scientific criticism.
- Retaliating against those who raise integrity concerns.
Member Responsibilities
All SSA members must:
- Ensure data they contribute come from real participants unless AI agents are the focus of the project.
- Obtain appropriate ethics approval (or documented exemption) for data collection.
- Follow SSA preregistration, data sharing, and authorship policies.
- Accurately report their contributions and avoid plagiarism.
- Declare conflicts of interest.
- Support ethical training and mentoring, especially for early-career researchers.
Leadership Responsibilities
SSA project teams and organising committee must:
- Enforce registered reports, preregistration, open science, and ethics requirements.
- Maintain secure and transparent data management.
- Prevent fabrication, falsification, or selective reporting.
- Keep clear records of study protocols, data, and analyses.
- Respond promptly and fairly to integrity concerns.
Reporting and Enforcement
Concerns about scientific misconduct or questionable research practices should be reported to:
sociologyexperimental@gmail.com
Reports will be reviewed confidentially by SSA leadership. Individuals who report concerns in good faith will be protected from retaliation.
Violations may result in removal from projects, loss of authorship, suspension or termination of SSA membership, or corrections or retractions of published work.
Ongoing Review
SSA will regularly review and update this policy to reflect best practices in open, collaborative, and trustworthy sociological science.