Foundations of Open, Rigorous and Reproducible Research

Dott. Mirko Marras
University of Cagliari

Abstract
This course equips participants with the conceptual and practical foundations required to conduct open, rigorous, and reproducible research, aligned with the evolving expectations of the scientific community. Integrating methodological principles with applied examples, the course examines the major challenges that arise when research lacks transparency, from restricted accessibility and ambiguous analytic workflows to irreproducible findings and diminished scientific credibility. Students will learn to design studies and experiments thoughtfully, plan analyses in advance, document methodological decisions in detail, and adopt best practices for data collection, preprocessing, visualization, simulation, and analysis, for improving the overall transparency. The course also addresses strategies for making research materials openly available, including datasets, proofs and derivations, code, computational environments, and documentation, while navigating ethical and practical constraints related to privacy, confidentiality, and intellectual property. These practices are discussed in the broader context of contemporary research, including as examples the requirements for openess mandated by funding agencies, the increasing use of transparency and reproducibility checklists in scientific call for papers, and community-wide initiatives advancing open science and responsible research practices. Emphasis is placed on modular, tractable, and domain-agnostic techniques that can be applied across theoretical, algorithmic, and empirical work. By the end of the course, participants will develop the core competence and mindset needed to meet these emerging standards and to produce research that is robust, transparent, verifiable, and ultimately more suitable for dissemination.

Schedule
The course will be held in June or July 2026, delivered over approximately 8 lectures for a total of 16 hours.

Exam
The final assessment consists of one of two options, to be selected in agreement with the instructor based on the student’s attendance and research needs. Students may either (i) engage with a published paper by producing a report assessing its transparency, evaluating how reproducible the study appears, and reflecting on any challenges they would expect to encounter while performing a full replication or (ii) they may prepare a plan for enabling openness, rigor, and reproducibility in one study within their doctoral research (or a closely related use case), aligning it as closely as possible with the principles and best practices introduced in the course.

Enrolment
Prospective participants should contact the instructor by email (mirko.marras@unica.it) to express their interest in attending no later than April 30, 2025.