Educational intervention For Open Science (Educ4OS) practices promotion: a multicenter cluster randomized controlled trial in early career researchers – Study Protocol

Aim: Open science (OS) practices aim to make scientific research more accessible, collaborative, sharable, inclusive, transparent, and reproducible. Educational interventions could be valuable in promoting these practices among researchers. As such, our study aims to assess the efficacy of an educational intervention in increasing early career researchers' adherence to OS practices (study registration, open methods, data sharing, open results) in dentistry. Methods: A cluster-randomized controlled trial will be carried out. All PhD students from a convenience sample of 20 Brazilian dental graduate programs will be invited to participate signing the informed consent. The clusters will be randomized in intervention (n=10) and control (n=10) groups. The participants allocated to the intervention will receive an intensive course addressing OS and Responsible Research Practices (RRPs) while the control group will participate in another course addressing Artificial Intelligence in Dentistry. The intervention will be an online interactive course, made available in video format with the participation of professors and researchers, including 75 hours of lectures, workshops, and supporting materials focusing on how to bring more integrity, rigor, and transparency to scientific work using OS principles. The number of OS practices (published as open access or preprint, protocol registration, data sharing, code sharing, disclosure of conflicts of interest, and disclosure of funding sources) adopted by the participants will be collected two and five years after the end of the intervention. An online self-administered questionnaire will collect their perceptions about the OS practices. Outcomes: The primary outcome will be the Open Science Score calculated for each published paper by the participants 2 and 5 years of the end of the intervention. OS practices adopted in the participants’ thesis will be collected and analyzed as a secondary outcome 5 years after the end of the intervention. Other secondary outcomes include the differences in scores on a survey measuring perceptions about OS practices between the intervention and control groups, measured after the course ended.