One of many posts on my Readiness Assessment. As a reminder of the ground rules, this is a solo assessment, so while I’m allowed to think out loud on my blog, I can’t ask for or get (intellectual) help. Cookies and emotional support are, however, welcome.

I made a table! I know it's not perfect, but it's a table! It's got the patterns of the radical transparency praxis (as I was able to identify them, anyway) up against how they could be implemented in qualitative research, and examples of their implementation if any existed.

Pattern

Implementation

Examples

If it ain't public, it don't count .

All data is public (open data); closed data is never analyzed.

Krafft released his dissertation data under a free license with permission from participants.

All publications are public (open access).

Every publication entry in Priem's CV is linked to the document, either self-archived or in an open access repository.

Authorship credit is determined entirely via public or publicly mentioned contributions.

None yet.

Release early, release often

Intermediate results are released before the project is complete – memos, rough sketches, drafts, etc.

This paper, along with practically all of the ones mentioned above; the process of dialogue with study participants is an integral part of practically all qualitative research paradgims that came after post-positivism. Coleman and Efimova are particularly nice examples of this.

Push to upstream

Always push data, intermediate analyses, and final papers to the most public forum possible. If fora are equally public, choose the one with the most prior work your work draws upon.

The pushing of final papers to the most public forum possible, and the one with the most prior work, is standard academic practice, albeit a largely tacit one. No similar practice has consistently been used for data and intermediate analyses.

If you extend, modify, or critizue an idea, notify the originator or maintainer (intellectual heir) of that idea.

This is hypothetically standard academic practice, but a very tacit one that typically falls under the category of „networking.“

Begin with the finishing touches

Use and cite existing work.

All work mentioned above. This is standard academic practice, and a fairly explicit one, unlike others in this table.

Cheap and reversible mistakes

It should cost almost nothing to make a change in a local copy (and preferably the main copy as well).

Lawler, Elliott, Krafft, and Haklev use(d) software for their dissertation data analysis that both allowed for public editing and had a single-click vandalism reversal feature.

It should cost almost nothing to undo a change in a local copy (and preferably the main copy as well).

While aliases and anonymity may be allowed, nobody should be able to masquerade under someone else's identity.

All work mentioned above. This is standard academic practice.

Optional: commit access to the main copy may be restricted, so long as anyone can create and modify a local copy.

All final scholarly outputs of the work mentioned above. The intermediate outputs typically do not have such restrictions.