Transparency and Openness (TOP)

In the effort of promoting an open science culture the magazine Science described ((DOI: 10.1126/science.aab2374)) guidelines for eight transparency standards, divided into three levels of interpretation, for publishers in regard to handling data in reviewing scientific publications. The goal of CHEMCONNECT is to promote the TOP concept and raise the bar for scientific research and data management:

• Citation Not only does CHEMCONNECT promote citations in the traditional sense of publication (and web pages), but also through interconnectivity and tracing of data through the whole process CHEMCONNECT. The data's origin and connections to methodologies and devices (with their citations) are made accessible
• Data transparency The data file provided by the researcher is interpreted and the data extracted in context with CHEMCONNECT's extensive knowledge base (represented as an ontology). This promotes interpretation, comparison and search of the data with other similar data within the repository. CHEMCONNECT's knowledge base of units provides interconvertibility and searching of results (researchers can use the units convenient, possibly for historical reasons, for their lab). A hierarchical concept tree helps interpret the results and gives them their context with other results (for example, researcher's do not need to agree on common keywords). The CHEMCONNECT data protocol concept gives links to the devices, methodologies and data on which the final results depend. The protocol reflects and documents the common practice of a particular laboratory.
• Analytic methods (code) transparency CHEMCONNECT promotes providing links to data and documentation through the whole process from how the data was collected and interpreted (methodologies) from which device, even components the measurements were made (devices, subsystems and components), and what data is needed in the manipulation of the data to the final published result. A key structure in the CHEMCONNECT repository is the protocol that is used to interpret the researcher's data files. The protocol gives links to the methodologies and other protocols, such as calibration, measurement and data manipulation, on which the data depends.
• Research materials transparency
• Design and analysis transparency
• The links
• Preregistration of studies
• Preregistration of analysis plans
• Replication
• Through the exact documentation of devices, methodologies, from calibration, to measurements, to manipulations, and their associated data, results can be verified and replicated by others.