The TIER Network is a forum for exchange of ideas among instructors, researchers, and data support specialists working to integrate transparency and reproducibility into the training of students in quantitative research methods.
What are the benefits of joining the TIER Network?
- Members are invited to participate in live, moderated discussions with other members of the Network on topics of mutual interest.
- Each member is given a dedicated page on the Project TIER website where they can make their work visible to other Network members as well as the general public.
To join the TIER Network

Just fill out this brief form to let us know about your work. We will set up a new page on the TIER website for you to populate with information about yourself and your work, and keep you up-to-date as moderated conversations among Network members are organized. And to thank you for joining, we will send you a Project TIER water bottle.

FALL 2020 NETWORK CONVERSATIONS
A series of informal discussions moderated by members of the TIER Network.
- All conversations take place on Friday afternoons, from 2:00-3:00 pm (eastern US time), via Zoom.
- All conversations can be joined using this link.
- Registration is not required, but would be appreciated. Register here.
October 2: TIER Protocol 4.0 Coming Soon: See What's New
Moderated by Richard Ball
Version 3.0 of the TIER Protocol--Project TIER's flagship guidance for conducting and documenting reproducible research--has been posted since October 2016. We are now nearing completion of a thoroughly revised version 4.0, which will be posted late 2020 or early 2021. Project TIER co-director Richard Ball will give a presentation on what is new in TIER Protocol 4.0--such as automated saving of output, emphasis on relative directory paths to make research compendia portable, and a design that allows more content to be delivered in a streamlined format. This will be an informal, interactive discussion. The goal is as much to get feedback from participants as it is to present them with information.
October 16: Taking the next step in reproducible research with provenance-based tools
Moderated by Aaron Ellison
The transparent, reproducible analyses essential for rapid scientific progress require two steps that are increasingly taken: making data publicly accessible and providing open-source code for their analyses. But author-provided code often is difficult to re-use because it is poorly documented or won’t run on newer operating systems or software versions. In this conversation, we will discuss software tools based on collection of data provenance that enable creation of well-documented, clean (debugged) code that can be run more easily by secondary users. We will also discuss what’s missing from current tools and what other tools could be more accessible and used more widely. (For background reading and exploration: https://end-to-end-provenance.github.io/).
October 30: TIER Without Fear
Moderated by Anne Nurse
How can we help students overcome their terror about reproducibility? Some of us teach large numbers of students who have few quantitative skills and no familiarity with coding. What are tricks for teaching them the Tier Protocol? How can we modify our statistics class to have room to teach reproducibility without losing sight of the main goals of the class? Does everyone have to learn R--or is it possible to do transparent and reproducible research with SPSS?
November 13: Curating for Reproducibility
Moderated by Florio Arguillas
Learn how curators at the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) work proactively with researchers to assemble comprehensive packages of documentation to ensure that statistical results in papers submitted to the CISER archive can be independently reproduced.
ABOUT TIER NETWORK CONVERSATIONS
These conversations are an opportunity for Network members to exchange ideas about any dimensions of research transparency or reproducibility in which they share an interest.
Our goal is to facilitate these conversations in such a way that they are flexible, informal, and easy to convene, yet planned and structured enough that they are focused and productive.
This mode of interaction among Network members was inspired by a conversation that emerged organically this spring, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Carolina Curvale, a political scientist at FLACSO Ecuador and a TIER Faculty Development Workshop alum, suggested that Project TIER should do something to help quantitative methods instructors adapt to remote teaching. So we chose a time and date for a Zoom meeting about that topic, and invited everyone in the TIER Network to join the meeting. Carolina moderated the meeting, and beforehand prepared an outline of issues to discuss and resources to suggest, but we made it clear to everyone involved that the event was not intended to be a formal presentation or program. Instead, Network members wishing to participate were asked to give some thought in advance to questions or suggestions they would like to contribute, and be prepared to join a genuine discussion of resources and strategies for teaching quantitative methods remotely. The meeting took place just one week after Carolina suggested the idea, and the broad goal we have for these conversations was achieved: all five of the participants offered ideas of their own and responded constructively to the issues raised by others; Carolina moderated with a light touch that allowed the discussion to develop organically, while maintaining focus and coherence.
This conversation about remote teaching provides a model for future conversations:
- A network member proposes a topic for a discussion.
- All members of the Network are invited to join a Zoom meeting for a conversation about the topic.
- A network member (probably the one who suggested the topic) moderates the discussion, but is not expected to give a formal presentation or program; instead, all participants bring their own ideas and engage in an open-ended exchange of ideas.
Within this general model, there is lots of room for flexibility in the topics chosen for the conversations and role the moderator plays. Choices about those aspects of the discussions should be driven by the interests and goals of the Network members who initiate and/or participate in them.
During the spring 2021 semester, because of the weekly events taking place as part of the Symposium on Teaching Reproducible Research, we will not be scheduling and network conversations.
Look out for information this summer about network conversations in fall 2021.
Member Pages on the Project TIER Website
Network members use their pages on the Project TIER website to share information about themselves and publicize their work to a wide audience.
Activities that members have highlighted on their pages include:
- incorporating principles or techniques of research transparency in a quantitative methods course they teach
- leading or contributing to workshops or conference presentations on reproducible research
- organizing or participating in a department- or campus-wide initiative to promote research transparency
- articles or blog entries they have written about transparency and reproducibility
To see what other Network members have posted on their pages, click on the tiles in the roster of members below.
Members

Nicholas Bussberg, Assistant Professor of Statistics

Florio Arguillas, Research Associate

Pallavi Banerjee, Programme Director, MSc Educational Research

Jerzy Baranowski, Associate Professor and Head of the Computer Science Laboratory in Control and Management, Department of Automatic Control and Robotics

Jade Barclay, PhD candidate in Medicine

Danillo Rafael Batista, Master's student in Political Science

Ben Baumer, Assistant Professor, Statistical & Data Sciences

Jennifer Beaudry, Academic Director (Research Training)

Megan Becker, Assistant (Teaching) Professor of International Relations, Director of the USC School of International Relations’ Undergraduate Research Program

Carola Binder, Assistant Professor of Economics

Lucas Borba-Miranda, Ph.D. candidate in Political Science

Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, Associate Professor of the Practice, Department of Statistical Science

David Colquhoun, Professor of Pharmacology

Chris Conway, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Alex Coppock, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Carolina Curvale, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Coordinator of Doctorate Program in Political Science

Amanda Domingos, Ph.D. student

Michael Dooley, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Tomas Dvorak, Professor of Economics

Aaron Ellison, Deputy Director, Harvard Forest

Nina Exner, Research Data Librarian

Antônio Fernandes, Master's student in Political Science

Dalson Figueiredo, Political Science assistant professor

Laura Fortunato, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology

Gili Freedman, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor of Psychology

Simon Halliday, Assistant Professor of Economics

Sam Harper, Associate Professor of Epidemiology

Nicholas Horton, Beitzel Professor of Statistics and Data Science

Matthew Ingram, Associate Professor of Political Science

Nicole Janz, Assistant Professor of Political Science

Daniel K.N. Johnson, Schlessman Professor of Economics

Jenna Krall, Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and Community Health

Bernadette Lanciaux, Instructional Faculty

Benjamin Le, Professor of Psychology

Carmel Levitan, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science

Rodrigo Lins, Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Sciences

Ben Marwick, Associate Professor of Archaeology

Amelia McNamara, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer & Information Sciences

Mariana Meneses, Ph.D. candidate in Political Science

Dana Milstein, Assistant Professor of Writing

Alex Montoye, Assistant Professor of Integrative Physiology and Health Science

Kara Moore, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Scott Moser, Associate Professor, School of Politics and International Relations
Marcus Munafo, University of Bristol, Chair, UKRN Steering Group

Anne Nurse, Professor of Sociology

Michael O'Hara, Assistant Professor of Economics

Limor Peer, Associate Director for Research

Janelle Peifer, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Aneta Piekut, Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences, Deputy Director of PGR at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Migration Research Group

Ian Rebouças Batista, Adjunct Professor of International Relations

Eike Mark Rinke, Lecturer in Politics and Media

Ingo Rohlfing, Professor for Methods of Comparative Political Research

David Ross, Associate Professor of Economics

Dan Sacks, Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy

John Towse, Professor of Psychology, Director of Research (Psychology)

Anthony Underwood, Associate Professor of Economics

David Vera, Associate Professor of Economics

Jordan Wagge, Associate Professor of Psychology, Executive Director for the Collaborative Replications and Education Project

Soazic Elise Wange Sonne, Ph.D. Fellow

Ryan Womack, Data Librarian

Nathan Wright, Associate Professor of Sociology
