Short abstract

The World Bank launched an initiative in 2023 to enhance reproducibility, strongly encouraging reproducibility packages for research products. We discuss learnings for metascience, share institutional lessons, and present a roadmap for alliances toward standardizing and increasing transparency.

Long abstract

Reproducibility is crucial to understanding how social scientists derive their findings. Reproducibility standards enhance the credibility, quality, and impact of research. Journals and research institutions are increasingly adopting reproducibility standards, requiring authors to provide the code, data, and documentation necessary to reproduce their results. In September 2023, the World Bank launched a new initiative to increase the reproducibility of its research. Reproducibility packages are strongly encouraged for working papers, books, and flagship reports produced by World Bank staff and consultants; and required for a subset of working papers. Since then, internal, third-party replicators have verified the computational reproducibility of more than 200 research products. Once verified, reproducibility packages and corresponding metadata are published to the World Bank’s Reproducible Research Repository.

This change to the World Bank’s research process creates unique opportunities to study and strengthen metascience. We discuss observed changes in the publication and outreach of working papers and code attributes associated with computational reproducibility. We introduce what is, to our knowledge, the first metadata schema specifically designed for reproducibility packages. We also present institutional lessons for transparency and reproducibility and a roadmap for alliances toward increased transparency in research from multilateral organizations.