Realizing the Full Potential of Big-Team Behavioral Science: How Global Collaborations Can Benefit From Participatory Open-Research Practices

Abstract

Big-team science collaborations have been heralded as a solution to oversampling in a limited number of high-income countries. Despite early successes, there is insufficient involvement from the global community and unclear benefits to globalized science. The expansion of research from sites in North America and Europe to parts of the world where most people live can create the appearance of progress based on geographical diversity while neglecting the perspectives, problems, and knowledge specific to those populations. Here, we describe participatory open-research practices that bring global perspectives to open science. Participatory practices involve revising and transparently communicating worldviews, valuing humility over control, prioritizing team facilitation over management, and listening to versus instructing collaborators. We detail these concepts and their utility and provide recommendations for conducting robust, open, and culturally embedded research that will help realize the potential value of big-team science.