As 2025 wraps up, we’re thrilled to share a snapshot of the Institute for Replication’s most meaningful milestones, from major community events to cutting-edge tools and expansions in research scope. This year wasn’t just about numbers (though we’ve got lots of those); it was about broadening our impact on research credibility, nurturing collaborations across disciplines, and making replication fun, relevant, and future-facing.
1) Public Health, Deforestation and Early‐Life Intervention
One of our standout thematic pushes in 2025 was into reproducing public health and environmental research, particularly deforestation, early-life intervention and tropical disease studies. Led by our co-chair, Jorg Ankel-Peters, this new focus on thematic mass reproductions dives into the reproducibility of evidence driving health and environmental policy and practice. Early results shared on our blog (The Reproducibility Gap in Tropical Disease Research) highlight critical gaps in replication packages across tropical disease and intervention studies, reinforcing why transparency matters for research that underpins real-world decisions.
2) 1300 Researchers Across 29 Replication Games
Our Replication Games continue to be the beating heart of I4R’s community impact. In 2025 we hosted 29 games with 1,300+ researchers joining from around the world, coming together to test, troubleshoot, and learn by doing. These games help demystify replication, build hands-on coding experience, and foster co-authorship in meta-research outputs: See Games.
3) The AI Replication Engine
One of the year’s most exciting activities was the development of our AI Replication Engine, a new intelligent system that autonomously assesses reproducibility, scans for coding errors, and tests robustness with advanced architecture powered by modern large-language models. This is a leap toward scaling replication beyond traditional manual workflows, making rigorous verification more accessible across disciplines. We are hoping to launch this replication engine early/mid 2026.
We also released our first AI replication paper: Comparing Human-Only, AI-Assisted, and AI-Led Teams on Assessing Research Reproducibility in Quantitative Social Science.
4) GDRI Investigation
From February-July 2025, I4R published results from an ongoing investigation into research that used data from the Global Development & Research Initiative Foundation (GDRI). This project reproduced several studies linked to the foundation, documenting a wide range of data irregularities leading to a retraction and countless withdrawn revised and resubmit and conditionally accepted studies: OSF.
5) Economic Inquiry Special Issue
2025 also saw the culmination of long-term journal collaborations. One of those collaborations is with Economic Inquiry. We helped curate a special issue focused on replication, robustness, and meta-scientific practices: Introduction to the symposium on reproducibility and replicability in economics: Part I – Bokhari – 2025 – Economic Inquiry – Wiley Online Library. A second issue is coming out shortly.
6) New Research Scientists Join the Team
We were proud to welcome new research scientists to the I4R family this year, including Lenka Fiala and Ghina Abdul Baki, strengthening our capacity across replication, meta-research methods, and public health research. Their expertise is already shaping projects across domains: About Us.
7) New AI Games
Building on our traditional Replication Games, 2025 marked the rollout of AI-oriented replication games where teams leveraged AI tools and lines of inquiry to amplify replication workflows. These experiences are helping us understand how human and AI capabilities best complement one another in rigorous research verification.
8) MAER-Net Conference in Ottawa
We were honored to play a central role at the 2025 MAER-Net Colloquium at the University of Ottawa, a flagship event bringing together meta-analysts, economists, and researchers from adjacent fields. Highlights included lively discussions around AI, methodological innovation, and the award of the Founder’s Medal to I4R’s own Abel Brodeur for contributions to meta-science and reproducibility. See here.
9) Launching I4R Fellows
In late 2025, I4R proudly opened applications for its Research Fellows program, a new initiative to recognize and connect contributors who’ve played active roles in our replication community. Fellows gain opportunities to publish working papers, collaborate on meta research, and deepen their engagement with I4R’s mission. Apply here: I4R Research Fellows
10) A New Website
Finally, and perhaps most visibly, we launched a redesigned I4R website, bringing together replication resources, event calendars, blog insights, and research outputs in one accessible hub for the global community.
Looking Ahead
2025 at I4R was about building, testing, and connecting, laying foundations that will support more transparent and credible research for years to come. From thousands of hands-on reproductions to AI innovations and global research gatherings, we’re grateful to everyone who made this year a milestone for replication science.
Stay tuned! 2026 promises even more tools, collaborations, and opportunities to question, verify, and strengthen the evidence base we all rely on.