The Production of Knowledge

Colin Elman is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry in the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. He co-founded (with Diana Kapiszewski, Georgetown University) the Qualitative Data Repository. John Gerring is Professor of Government at University of Texas at Austin. He serves as co-PI of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the Global Leadership Project (GLP). James Mahoney is the Gordon Fulcher Professor in Decision-Making at Northwestern University, where he holds appointments in Political Science and Sociology.  He is founding director of the Comparative-Historical Social Science (CHSS) program at Northwestern.

• 1. Introduction John Gerring, James Mahoney and Colin Elman; Part I. Discovery: 2. Exploratory Research Richard Swedberg; 3. Research Cycles Evan Lieberman; Part II. Publishing: 4. Peer Review Tim Liao; 5. Length Limits John Gerring and Lee Cojocaru; Part III. Transparency and Reproducibility: 6. Transparency and Reproducibility: Conceptualizing the Problem Garret Christensen and Edward Miguel; 7. Transparency and Reproducibility: Potential Solutions Garret Christensen and Edward Miguel; 8. Making Research Data Accessible Diana Kapiszewski, Sebastian Karcher; 9. Pre-registration and Results-Free Review in Observational and Qualitative Research Alan M. Jacobs; Part IV. Appraisal: 10. Replication for Quantitative Research Jeremy Freese and David Peterson; 11. Measurement Replication in Qualitative and Quantitative Studies Dan Reiter; 12. Reliability of Inference: Analogs of Replication in Qualitative Research Tasha Fairfield and Andrew Charman; 13. Coordinating Reappraisals John Gerring; 14. Comprehensive Appraisal John Gerring; 15. Impact Metrics John Gerring, Sebastian Karcher and Brendan Apfeld; Part V. Diversity: 16. Gender Diversity Dawn Teele; 17. Ideological Diversity Neil Gross and Christopher Robertson; VI. Conclusion: 18. Proposals John Gerring, James Mahoney and Colin Elman

Social science is simultaneously more successful and more troubled than ever before.  This welcome collection of essays, on different aspects of the social structure of social science, is helpful for understanding what's gone wrong and how we can do better. Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science, Columbia University