DevStart: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Open Tools and Methods

Open-science practices are a key component in advancing research transparency, as they facilitate reproducibility, accessibility, and collaboration across the scientific community. Nevertheless, significant gaps remain, particularly around the practical details of designing, running, and analysing experiments. DevStart (http://devstart.org/) addresses these needs by unifying historically fragmented resources into a single, hands-on guide for cognitive scientists. This paper outlines DevStart’s core framework and demonstrates how it streamlines the entire research pipeline: from installing free programming tools (Python and R) to building experimental paradigms and handling complex data (e.g., gaze, pupil size) with robust, open-source methods. By detailing step-by-step tutorials and openly sharing code and pipelines, DevStart lowers the barriers that hinder many early career researchers and students. Beyond tutorials, DevStart fosters community engagement through an online forum that supports collaboration, troubleshooting, and the exchange of ideas. In doing so, we aim to foster a vibrant research community that embraces robust, open, and collaborative science at every step of the experimental process.