Commentary: Making Patient Data Count-Opportunities and Challenges for Open Science in Clinical Psychology

Open science practices-such as preregistration, data and material sharing, and open-access dissemination-are increasingly promoted across psychology, yet their specific value for clinical psychology has often been overlooked. This commentary argues that open science is particularly crucial for clinical psychology, where studies rely on small, hard-to-recruit patient samples, ethically sensitive data, and complex psychotherapeutic interventions. However, applying open science practices in one's research can be challenging. And yet, it is becoming increasingly necessary to take a stance on this. To support our colleagues in clinical psychology to take a stance on open science practices and to motivate them to apply these practices in their research, we describe here how the use of open science practices benefits or can benefit clinical psychology science and practice and provide some perspective on why we believe that the increasing use of open science practices is consistent with good scientific practice and the ethical standards of our profession. In addition, we discuss how calls for increased implementation of open science practices in psychological research can be reconciled with some of the challenges, concerns, and conflicts that can arise around open science practices, especially in clinical psychology. Finally, we extend open science's inclusive and collaborative stance to include "experts by experience" in the research process. Including our research topics in the research process is a specific facet of the open science approach in clinical psychology that has been overlooked.