Strengthening Research
Since 2012, BITSS has worked to improve research credibility by advancing transparency, reproducibility, rigor, and ethics.
New InitiativeRead the Statement →
BITSS & 3ie Launch the Sustainable Evidence Infrastructure Commitment
Read how CEGA, 3ie, and partners are working to strengthen the evidence pipeline so studies are conducted, reported, and published in ways that facilitate data re-use and synthesis.
Blog
Data Aggregation: Unlocking the Full Value of Development Evidence
This post was written by Jo Weech, Research Transparency Program Manager at BITSS. The global development community has published more than 20,000 impact evaluations across health, education, agriculture, financial inclusion since 1990. However, the ability to learn systematically from these evaluations has been limited: constrained by diverse study designs, fragmented reporting, and…The World Bank’s Reproducible Research Initiative: Raising the Bar for Transparency in Development Economics
Written for the BITSS Blog by Maria Ruth Jones, Senior Economist at the World Bank’s Development Impact Group. Imagine a world where every policy decision is backed by transparent, reproducible evidence—where anyone can verify the numbers behind the headlines. The World Bank has just taken a major step toward making this vision…Putting Open Science Into Practice: Reflections from the 2025 RT2 Training
This year’s RT2 took place from May 21-23, 2025 on UC Berkeley’s Campus. BITSS Program Manager Jo Weech shares common questions from 28 early-career researchers who are working to implement open science practices in their own research. The academic community has long reckoned with epistemic challenges, from the reproducibility to the underreporting…Advancing Research Transparency: A Conversation on Replication Checklists
Replication is an important tool for research credibility. In this interview, BITSS Program Manager Jo Weech interviewed impact evaluation experts Sridevi Prasad and Douglas Glandon on their replication checklist, designed to help standardize replications for impact evaluations and other social science studies. As the political landscape and funding for scientific research is…
Recent Research
May 2025 | NBER WP 33753
Assessing Reproducibility in Economics Using Standardized Crowd-sourced Analysis
Abel Brodeur, Seung Yong Sung, Edward Miguel, Lars Vilhuber, and Fernando Hoces de la Guardia
Nov 2025 | NBER WP 34493
Forecasting Social Science: Evidence from 100 Projects
Stefano DellaVigna and Eva Vivalt