Open Science Practices in Personality Disorder Journals

From 2010 to 2014, a series of events and publications revealed that much of the psychological literature was less robust than the field believed. Researchers have highlighted various issues underlying fragile findings in large swaths of psychological science. In response, the field has also proposed solutions to help build a more robust literature. Foremost among these solutions are a suite of Open Science practices, including preregistration, Registered Reports, and the posting of materials, data, and analytic scripts. While these solutions have primarily emerged outside of clinical science, there is some evidence that clinical science is beginning to adopt Open Science practices. The present study focuses on the use of Open Science practices in personality disorder research, specifically. We discuss the relevance of these practices to personality disorder research, and examine rates of Open Science practices in articles published between 2021-2023 in two personality disorder journals, Journal of Personality Disorders (Article N=150) and Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment (Article N=158). The rate of Open Science practices in these articles was compared to empirical articles from a select number of general personality journals published during the same time period (Article N range=125-247). Overall, the personality disorder articles showed lower rates of Open Science practices compared to the general personality articles, while some practices (Registered Reports) were consistently low across all articles. In light of these findings, we discuss ways that personality disorder researchers can effectively implement Open Science practices to help facilitate a more transparent research literature.