The Open Science Toolbox - Advancing research transparency and quality.

Open science has become a rallying cry in the scientific community, but too often it falls short in practice. Here we provide an overview of practices that can be applied throughout the research process to help scientists improve the transparency and quality of their work. As
open science practices continue to evolve, we are also providing an online toolbox of resources that we will update on an ongoing basis. This toolbox can be accessed through Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6497559).
Animal research has a special responsibility to be transparent and of high scientific quality, as it still relies on animal testing and is the basis for clinical trials that can potentially put patients at risk. However, animal research still lags behind other fields in implementing open science practices. In addition to deep-seated problems in the scientific incentive system, this deficit may also be due to a lack of information. Animal researchers already have a number of tools at their disposal to increase the transparency of their scientific work. We provide an overview of the tools that can be used throughout the research process, from planning to conducting to analyzing and publishing a study.
Open science practices not only raise the profile of individual scientists, but can also initiate a change in research culture toward greater transparency and quality. There are early signs that open science is increasingly being adopted in animal research as key players in the scientific incentive system, i.e. funders, publishers and research institutions, support and in some cases already require the implementation of open science practices. However, scientists do not have to wait for the slowly evolving incentive framework to change their research habits; they can take the initiative and start using open science tools for more collaboration, transparency and reproducibility today.