Open qualitative L2 research: Where are we now and where do we go from here?

Abstract

The field of L2 research is going through a shift toward greater openness. However, many widely promoted open research practices, such as replication and preregistration, originated in response to the reproducibility crisis in psychology and map unevenly onto qualitative research. This critical review synthesizes literature from L2 research and neighboring fields to examine open research from a qualitative perspective. We organize the review around five key debates, including replication, preregistration, data sharing, data reuse, and publication policy. Taken together, these debates reveal the complexity of openness in qualitative inquiry and show both points of convergence and tension. We identify an emerging trend from principled resistance to principled engagement in the literature, with transparency standing out as a unifying principle. Building on these insights, we propose the situated-openness framework that serves as a heuristic for qualitative researchers to consider how to practice open scholarship in alignment with their own epistemological and ontological commitments.