Analysis of the Occurrence of 'Applications/Replications' in Ten Published Papers

"Application" or "replication" research, already rare, is diminishing in both quantity and quality, for a variety of reasons ("How science goes wrong," 2013; "For my next trick," 2016). In this study of "replications" and "applications," 351 papers that included a reference to any one of ten of the author's papers published between 2001 and 2007 (the "child" papers) were examined. A total of seventeen instances of "application/replication" by other researchers (the relative rarity already a finding) of some element, processes, procedures, instruments, or findings, of one of the author's "parent" papers were found, about 5% of the total 351 original parent papers. No self-replications by the author were studied. The findings showed that, of the small number of replications, three (less than 18% of the total) were "exact" replications, five (about 29%) were "partial," and nine (about 53%) were "conceptual" only ("investigating the same construct but with different methods and measures"; Jones, Derby, & Schmidlin, 2010). All of the replications reported were based on "positive" or "neutral" views of the parent paper, none were based on a "negative" view, potentially problematic, it was concluded, if one of the goals of replication is to identify weaknesses or mistakes in previous work. Another finding was that, after publishing in this area, a minority of authors published another paper on a related topic in the same area at least once in the future. The paper concluded with a call for greater acceptance and valuing of "application/replication" research in general, and of disagreements (and therefore corrections of concepts) among practitioners, by researchers, publishers, editors, reviewers, and authors.