Metascience, also known as science of science, is the systematic study of science itself. It analyzes the practices, structures, and outcomes of scientific research, including research design, peer review, publication bias, replication, and incentive structures, with the aim of improving the reliability, transparency, and impact of scientific knowledge production. Emerging at the intersection of the philosophy of science, the sociology of science, scientometrics, and research methodology, it draws on empirical and quantitative approaches to evaluate how science is conducted, communicated, and assessed.
The field has gained prominence in the context of the replication crisis and broader debates around open science, research integrity, and evidence-based policy. Its scope encompasses all fields of research and has been described as offering "a bird's eye view of science". In the words of John Ioannidis, "Science is the best thing that has happened to human beings... but we can do it better."
In 1966, an early meta-research paper examined the statistical methods of 295 papers published in ten high-profile medical journals. It found that "in almost 73% of the reports read... conclusions were drawn when the justification for these conclusions was invalid." Meta-research in the following decades found many methodological flaws, inefficiencies, and poor practices in research across numerous scientific fields. Many scientific studies could not be reproduced, particularly in medicine and the social sciences. The term "replication crisis" was coined in the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem.
Measures have been implemented to address the issues revealed by metascience. These measures include the pre-registration of scientific studies and clinical trials, as well as the founding of organizations such as CONSORT and the EQUATOR Network that issue guidelines for methodology and reporting. There are ongoing efforts aimed at addressing misuse of statistics, eliminating perverse incentives within academic institutions, improving the peer review process, systematically collecting data about the scholarly publication system, combating bias in scientific literature, and enhancing the overall quality and efficiency of the scientific process. As such, metascience is a big part of methods underlying the open science movement.
History
In 1966, an early meta-research paper examined the statistical methods of 295 papers published in ten high-profile medical journals. It found that "in almost 73% of the reports read ... conclusions were drawn when the justification for these conclusions was invalid." A paper in 1976 called for funding for meta-research: "Because the very nature of research on research, particularly if it is prospective, requires long periods of time, we recommend that independent, highly competent groups be established with ample, long term support to conduct and support retrospective and prospective research on the nature of scientific discovery". In 2005, John Ioannidis published a paper titled "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False", which argued that a majority of papers in the medical field produce conclusions that are wrong. The paper went on to become the most downloaded paper in the Public Library of ScienceMedicine - Stanford Prevention Research Center. John P.A. Ioannidis and is considered foundational to the field of metascience. In a related study with Jeremy Howick and Despina Koletsi, Ioannidis showed that only a minority of medical interventions are supported by 'high quality' evidence according to The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach.Howick J, Koletsi D, Pandis N, Fleming PS, Loef M, Walach H, Schmidt S, Ioannidis JA. The quality of evidence for medical interventions does not improve or worsen: a metaepidemiological study of Cochrane reviews. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 2020;126:154–159 Later meta-research identified widespread difficulty in replicating results in many scientific fields, including psychology and medicine. This problem was termed "the replication crisis". Metascience has grown as a reaction to the replication crisis and to concerns about waste in research.
Major publishers have committed resources to meta-research and quality improvement initiatives. Top journals such as Science, The Lancet, and Nature, provide ongoing coverage of meta-research and problems with reproducibility. In 2012 PLOS ONE launched a Reproducibility Initiative. In 2015 BioMed Central introduced a minimum-standards-of-reporting checklist to four titles.
The first international conference in the broad area of meta-research was the Research Waste/EQUATOR conference held in Edinburgh in 2015; the first international conference on peer review was the Peer Review Congress held in 1989. In 2016, Research Integrity and Peer Review was launched. The journal's opening editorial called for "research that will increase our understanding and suggest potential solutions to issues related to peer review, study reporting, and research and publication ethics".
On 8 July 2025, an editorial published in Nature announced the birth of the Metascience Alliance, a coalition of more than 25 funders, academic groups, companies, and other institutions that pursue metascience: the use of scientific methods to understand and improve science itself. The initiative was attended in London by more than 830 participants from around 65 countries. The editorial calls upon metascientists not to limit themselves to studies within academia, but to address the broader social needs, to communicate scientific uncertainty effectively, and rebuild public trust in science.
Fields and topics of meta-research
Metascience can be categorized into five major areas of interest: Methods, Reporting, Reproducibility, Evaluation, and Incentives. These correspond, respectively, with how to perform, communicate, verify, evaluate, and reward research.
Methods Metascience seeks to identify poor research practices, including biases in research, poor study design, abuse of statistics, and to find methods to reduce these practices. Meta-research has identified numerous biases in scientific literature, particularly the misuse of p-values and overreliance on significance testing.
Scientific data science Scientific data science is the use of data science to analyse research papers. It encompasses qualitative and quantitative methods. Research in scientific data science includes fraud detection. and citation network analysis.
Journalology
Journalology, also known as publication science, is the scholarly study of all aspects of the academic publishing process. The field seeks to improve the quality of scholarly research by implementing evidence-based practices in academic publishing. The term "journalology" was coined by Stephen Lock, the former editor-in-chief of The BMJ. The first Peer Review Congress, held in 1989 in Chicago, Illinois, is considered a pivotal moment in the founding of journalology as a distinct field. The field of journalology has been influential in pushing for study pre-registration in science, particularly in clinical trials. Clinical-trial registration is now expected in most countries.
Reporting
Meta-research has identified poor practices in reporting, explaining, disseminating and popularizing research, particularly within the social and health sciences. Poor reporting makes it difficult to accurately interpret the results of scientific studies, to replicate studies, and to identify biases and conflicts of interest in the authors. Solutions include the implementation of reporting standards, and greater transparency in scientific studies (including better requirements for disclosure of conflicts of interest). There is an attempt to standardize reporting of data and methodology through the creation of guidelines by reporting agencies such as CONSORT and the larger EQUATOR Network.
Reproducibility
The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis in which it has been found that many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to replicate. While the crisis has its roots in the meta-research of the mid- to late 20th century, the phrase "replication crisis" was not coined until the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem. The replication crisis has been closely studied in psychology (especially social psychology) and medicine, including cancer research. Replication is an essential part of the scientific process, and the widespread failure of replication puts into question the reliability of affected fields.Staddon, John (2017) Scientific Method: How science works, fails to work or pretends to work. Taylor and Francis.
Moreover, replication of research (or failure to replicate) is considered less influential than original research, and is less likely to be published in many fields. This discourages the reporting of, and even attempts to replicate, studies.
Evaluation and incentives
Metascience seeks to create a scientific foundation for peer review. Meta-research evaluates peer review systems including pre-publication peer review, post-publication peer review, and open peer review. It also seeks to develop better research funding criteria.
Metascience seeks to promote better research through better incentive systems. This includes studying the accuracy, effectiveness, costs, and benefits of different approaches to ranking and evaluating research and those who perform it. Critics argue that perverse incentives have created a publish-or-perish environment in academia which promotes the production of junk science, low quality research, and false positives. According to Brian Nosek, "The problem that we face is that the incentive system is focused almost entirely on getting research published, rather than on getting research right." Proponents of reform seek to structure the incentive system to favor higher-quality results. For example, by quality being judged on the basis of narrative expert evaluations ("rather than [only or mainly] indices"), institutional evaluation criteria, guaranteeing of transparency, and professional standards.
Contributorship Studies proposed machine-readable standards and (a taxonomy of) badges for science publication management systems that hones in on contributorship – who has contributed what and how much of the research labor – rather than using the traditional concept of plain authorship – who was involved in any way in the creation of a publication. A study pointed out one of the problems associated with the ongoing neglect of contribution nuanciation – it found that "the number of publications has ceased to be a good metric as a result of longer author lists, shorter papers, and surging publication numbers".
Assessment factors Factors other than a submission's merits can substantially influence peer reviewers' evaluations. Such factors may however also be important such as the use of track-records about the veracity of a researchers' prior publications and its alignment with public interests. Nevertheless, evaluation systems – include those of peer-review – may substantially lack mechanisms and criteria that are oriented or well-performingly oriented towards merit, real-world positive impact, progress and public usefulness rather than analytical indicators such as number of citations or altmetrics even when such can be used as partial indicators of such ends. Rethinking of the academic reward structure "to offer more formal recognition for intermediate products, such as data" could have positive impacts and reduce data withholding.
Recognition of training A commentary noted that academic rankings don't consider where (country and institute) the respective researchers were trained.
Scientometrics