The Prevalence of Direct Replication Articles in Top-Ranking Psychology Journals

Despite lip service about replication being a cornerstone of science, replications have historically received little real estate in the published literature. Following psychology’s recent replication crisis, we assessed the prevalence of one type of replication contribution: direct replication articles — articles where a direct or close replication of a previously published study is one of the main contributions of the article. This prevalence provides one indicator of how much the field values and incentivizes this type of self-correction. We used a keyword search combined with manual checking to identify direct replication articles that were published from 2010 – 2021 in the 100 highest-impact psychology journals. In total, only 0.2% of articles (169 articles out 84,834) were direct replication articles. There was a small suggestive increase in the prevalence of direct replication articles over time. Additionally, journals with a stated policy of considering replication submissions (31% of journals) were 7.85 times more likely to publish direct replication articles than those without such a policy. Fifty-four out of 88 journals did not publish any direct replication articles in the eleven years surveyed. Our estimate is not the same as the prevalence of direct replication studies overall (direct replication results can be shared in many ways other than as direct replication articles in top journals). Ultimately, direct replication articles are still rare, with a few journals doing most of the heavy lifting. Based on these findings, we argue it would be premature to declare that psychology’s replication crisis is over.