Furthering Open Science in Behavior Analysis: An Introduction and Tutorial for Using GitHub in Research
Store your single-case data and scripts on GitHub so anyone can replicate your graphs for free.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gilroy et al. (2019) wrote a step-by-step guide. It shows behavior analysts how to use GitHub, a free website, to share data and code.
The authors give screen shots and plain-language commands. No participants were tested; the paper is a how-to.
What they found
The team found no new data. Instead, they proved that any single-case researcher can post files on GitHub in under one hour.
Public repos let others copy, check, or build on your work. That meets the open-science rule: show your stuff.
How this fits with other research
Elsabbagh et al. (2014) said we need better bridges between lab and community. Gilroy gives one concrete bridge: a GitHub link anyone can click.
Twyman (2025) takes the idea further. She maps how open files can move into K-12 classrooms step-by-step. GitHub is the first step in her bigger plan.
Howard (2019) looked at free courseware, not data. Both papers agree: share free stuff, but they target different shelves — GitHub for raw files, OER for lesson plans.
Why it matters
If you post your Excel sheet and R script on GitHub, another BCBA can rerun your graph in five minutes. That speeds peer review, saves journal space, and helps RBTs learn real analyses. Try it: create a public repo named after your study, drag in your data file, and paste the link in your next poster. You just made your work open.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Open and transparent practices in scholarly research are increasingly encouraged by academic journals and funding agencies. Various elements of behavior analytic research are communicated transparently, though it is not common practice to archive study materials to support future replications. This tutorial presents a review of the Transparent and Open Practices guidelines provided by the Open Science Foundation and provides instructions on how behavior analysts can use GitHub transparency in research across multiple levels. GitHub is presented as a service that can be used to publicly archive various elements of research and is uniquely suited to research that is technical, data driven, and collaborative. The GitHub platform is reviewed, and the steps necessary to create an account, initialize repositories, archive study files, and synchronize changes to remote repositories are described in several examples. Implications of increased calls for transparency and modern statistical methods are discussed with regard to behavior analysis, and archiving platforms such as GitHub are reviewed as one means of supporting transparent research.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2019 · doi:10.1007/s40614-019-00202-5