Proposal: merge overlapping curriculum sub-clusters and agree their primary homes

Proposal

Consolidate overlapping sub-clusters into the named topics below. Keep the eleven top-level clusters and avoid adding overview pages or extra kinds of teaching unit. The aim is a clearer topic list for deciding which lesson plans to develop.

Each merged topic would have one maintained reading list, description and identifier. The table gives a primary home for every topic. If FORRT allows the same sub-cluster to be shown in two clusters, the final column gives the second placement; both appearances would use that same record. If we decide against duplication, use only the primary home. Related topics may still contain ordinary links; these would not be additional sub-cluster entries.

Merges and proposed names

Numbers identify the current entries, not proposed new numbering. “Merge” means preserving all relevant resources, removing only genuine duplicate references and rewriting the description to cover the combined scope. Misfiled resources move to the topic they actually concern.

Current sub-clusters to merge	Proposed name	Primary home (also the placement if duplication is rejected)	Also show here if shared placement is allowed
1.2 Scientific misconduct: fabrication and falsification + 11.2 Research misconduct: fabrication, falsification, plagiarism	Research misconduct: fabrication, falsification and plagiarism	Research Integrity	Replication Crisis and Credibility Revolution
1.3 Questionable research practices and their prevalence + 11.3 Questionable and responsible research practices	Questionable and responsible research practices	Research Integrity	Replication Crisis and Credibility Revolution
4.1 Preregistration + 4.2 Purpose of pre-analysis planning + 4.4 Study design + 4.5 Types of preregistration and writing one	Preregistration: purpose, practice and deviations	Pre-analysis Planning	—
2.6 Research design and sampling + 9.5 Sample diversity and generalisability	Research design, sampling and generalisability	Conceptual and Statistical Knowledge	Academic Structures and Institutions
3.8 Reflexivity and positionality + 10.6 Reflexivity and positionality	Reflexivity and positionality	Ways of Working	Qualitative Research
5.1 Qualitative analysis and reporting + 10.9 Standards for rigorous qualitative research + 10.10 Transparency in qualitative research	Rigour, transparency and reporting in qualitative research	Qualitative Research	Transparency and Reproducibility in Computation and Analysis
9.19 Structures and incentives in academia + 11.4 Research culture, incentives and institutional responsibilities	Research culture, incentives and institutional responsibilities	Academic Structures and Institutions	Research Integrity
9.17 Socially responsible research + 11.7 Research integrity, social responsibility and equity	Research integrity, social responsibility and equity	Research Integrity	Academic Structures and Institutions
2.4 Philosophy of science + 9.12 Objectivity in research	Philosophy of science and objectivity	Conceptual and Statistical Knowledge	Academic Structures and Institutions
7.6 Rights retention strategies + 7.7 SPARC Europe Rights Retention Helper	Rights retention strategies and tools	Publication Sharing	—

The rationale is straightforward: misconduct, questionable practices, incentives and social responsibility currently have overlapping entries across clusters; preregistration is split across rationale and practical steps; design and generalisability are split between statistics and institutions; the SPARC helper is one tool within rights retention. Qualitative rigour, transparency and reporting can form one coherent entry; objectivity sits naturally with philosophy of science. The current Study Design entry has one reading, on preregistration deviations, so it belongs in the preregistration merge. Pre-analysis Planning would then contain two sub-clusters: Preregistration and Registered Reports.

The two reflexivity entries have exactly identical lists of 31 records, including repeated references within each list. The other merges are consolidation proposals based on titles and descriptions, rather than claims that their reading lists are identical. Some combine distinct aspects of one subject. In particular, the combined qualitative reporting entry must retain transparency towards participants and communities as well as reporting to other researchers. The design entry must retain representation and the limits of generalisation, not just sample-size calculations. The questionable-practices entry must retain prevalence evidence as well as responsible alternatives.

Moves and one further rename

Move 3.1 Qualitative research to Qualitative Research, renamed Qualitative research design and methods. Keep 10.3 Philosophical underpinnings of qualitative research separate: introductory methods and philosophical positions are different subjects. If shared placement is allowed, the moved introduction can also appear in Ways of Working; otherwise it appears only in Qualitative Research.

Move 3.11 Slow Science/Slow Scholarship to Academic Structures and Institutions, retaining its name and resources. Its main concern is research culture, workload and incentives. Use this single placement in either display arrangement.

Retain 9.10 Multimodal barriers to communication as a separate topic from Accessibility and rename it Language and communication barriers in academia. Keep both in Academic Structures and Institutions. The renamed entry must preserve augmentative/alternative communication as well as non-native English, accent bias and linguistic justice.

Keep these distinctions

Keep Registered Reports separate from preregistration: journal review and in-principle acceptance add a distinct workflow. Keep Research assessment, proposals and reforms separate from the broader culture/incentives entry: evaluating assessment systems is a specific task. The merged culture/incentives entry explains pressures, working conditions and institutional responsibilities; the assessment entry evaluates particular assessment criteria and reform proposals. Put shared reform readings in the relevant scopes without repeating the same explanation.

Keep Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as distinct sub-clusters. Also retain the specialist topics on decolonisation, feminist thought, racism, neurodiversity, religion and culture, sexuality and gender, and appearance. Overlapping readings do not make their questions interchangeable.

Keep the qualitative-specific topics on open science approaches, data sharing, preregistration/Registered Reports, replication and secondary analysis. Their methodological and ethical differences warrant dedicated guidance. Keep research with students, FAIR teaching materials and integrity training distinct; a shared audience does not make them the same topic.

Decision and implementation

Agree the merge/name table and choose whether shared placement is allowed. Then have the relevant cluster leads check the combined scopes and resource lists before migrating them, particularly the qualitative reporting entry whose current standards description is blank.

These ten merges reduce 93 current entries to 80 maintained sub-clusters. The two moves and the language/communication rename do not change that count. Showing a shared record in two places increases the displayed entries, not the number maintained. The count is an outcome of the specific proposal, not a target for further cuts.

Implementation should preserve every unique resource, the recommended-resource associations used by scripts/build_featured_data.py, and old links. Current website anchors are derived from the cluster number and topic name, so moves and renames can break old links. Keep explicit old-to-new anchor aliases or redirects, and preserve historical number mappings for teaching resources. Update the sub-cluster names in the source sheets and the name-to-cluster mapping in scripts/build_featured_data.py in the same migration. That mapping currently assigns a name to one cluster; shared placement would require it to support both appearances, including their recommended resources. Each appearance has its own cluster-specific anchor, while using one maintained record.

Refresh descriptions, navigation, search and hard-coded topic counts; shared appearances must not double-count unique topics or references. Ask cluster leads to revise the objectivity description, which currently states that objectivity is a myth, to explain the competing positions.

Resource clean-up is part of the migration: move Open Stats Lab, Software Carpentry and Project TIER from the qualitative reporting list to the appropriate quantitative/computational topics; move the Harmon-Jones et al. laboratory-methods paper from qualitative standards to replication methods. Recover the explanatory prose currently stored as the first “publication” in qualitative standards into its description, checking its citation details. Changes need to be made in the upstream sources as well as generated website data.

Under single placement, the institutions cluster would no longer list sample diversity as a sub-cluster. The combined design entry must explicitly retain global representation, constraints on generalisation and their social implications; link to it from relevant equity/inclusion descriptions.

Source: the current cluster data. This proposal concerns taxonomy changes; no changes have been applied. It complements #843, which concerns displaying teaching resources within the clusters.

Review provenance

Drafted with GPT-6.1 Sol and reviewed by Claude Opus 5.5 against the current cluster data and website code. The review led to retaining accessibility and language barriers separately, moving qualitative methods without merging them into philosophy, and placing Study Design within preregistration. Findings were checked against the local source files before posting.