Meta is partnering with the Secure Data Access Centre (CASD), which is located in France. CASD provides secure access to sensitive data for research purposes. It specializes in providing secure access to highly detailed individual data that require a high level of security to prevent unauthorized dissemination or use.

Meta sought an experienced, independent organization to provide data access tools that are easy for researchers to use while, given the sensitive nature of the data, providing secure access in a cleanroom environment with rules for what data can be imported as well as rules for what information can be exported to protect the confidentiality of data subjects. 

CASD has managed and hosted more than 1500 projects with more than 500 unique data sources and more than 5800 users since launch. Their previous work includes a pilot project conducted by Meta and the European Digital Monitoring Observatory (EDMO). 

CASD employs a secure equipment setup that includes a specially designed access box known as the SD-Box. This box, along with a secure central infrastructure, forms a closed unit where users can remotely access the data via a dedicated project server, ensuring a seamless and secure data access experience. More detailed information about the CASD cleanroom environment and the onboarding process can be found in the CASD User Guide. 

More detailed information about the CASD cleanroom environment and the onboarding process can be found in the CASD User Guide. After signing Meta’s Information Sharing Agreement and completing Meta’s third-party onboarding requirements, you will need to complete CASD’s onboarding as well, including attendance at an enrollment session to introduce you to their cleanroom environment and signing their Terms and Conditions. 

Meta is pleased to be able to provide pilot researchers with access to the Instagram data in the third-party cleanroom for up to 15 months. Extensions for access will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Pilot researchers will be invoiced directly by CASD for any monthly costs associated with extended access. CASD’s price list can be found on their website. 

Approved reproduction researchers will have access to the Instagram data in the third-party cleanroom for up to 6 months after approval within the three year period after the Stage 2 Registered Report is published.

Pilot researchers will be able to import the data described in their Stage 1 Registered Report into the CASD cleanroom environment for the purpose of conducting their approved study. 

Meta will only share the consented and authorized Instagram data for this pilot program with approved researchers using the CASD cleanroom environment. 

There is no funding available for researchers as part of this pilot program. Researchers must design and recruit their own study participants using online or offline study designs, and neither the researchers nor study participants will receive financial payments or other compensation from Meta or COS. 

This pilot is designed to promote rigorous, transparent, and credible research. The Registered Reports (RRs) publishing method enables those outcomes by restructuring incentives in scientific publishing, where researchers are rewarded for producing rigorous and transparent science. 

RRs support values of open science including:

1. Rigor. Scientific rigor is a value of open science because it supports high-quality and unbiased study design, analysis, and interpretation of results. By having researchers commit to a study design before data collection, and shifting peer review to occur before results are known, RRs reduce the pressure to produce novel or positive results. This shift in focus can prevent questionable research practices and bias, such as selective reporting or HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known) by researchers, or outcome bias by reviewers.
2. Transparency. Transparency of methodologies is a value of open science because by increasing accountability, it reduces biases in practices at every stage of publishing a scientific paper, including research design, analysis, reporting, reviewing, and selection for publication. In RRs, researchers must specify their hypothesis as well as the criteria that will determine whether those hypotheses are supported. Additionally, in their final reports, researchers must adhere to the study design specified in their RR – which must be published regardless of study findings along with any study artifacts such as code, peer reviews, or study protocols. As part of this pilot program, Meta will do its part by providing a User Guide for data requests, a data request form, a response to the data request form, and a codebook for shared data, which may be published alongside the RR as well.
3. Reproducibility. Reproducibility is a value of open science because it helps ensure the integrity of scientific research and increases confidence in results. The RR publishing model encourages reproducibility by shifting peer review to occur before data collection and focuses on the strength of the methods, while also having higher expectations on materials sharing including data and code.

COS prepared training materials and other resources to provide an introduction to Registered Reports. You can find the resources on the COS website or use this link.

As noted above, COS prepared training materials and other resources to provide an introduction to Registered Reports. You can find the resources on the COS website or use this link.

Meta has provided a User Guide that will describe in greater detail the data that can be made available as part of this pilot program, and how it will be possible to merge with other study data collected by pilot researchers.

This pilot program is designed to preserve the independence of scientific review and research processes. As such, Meta will not be involved in selecting which proposals move forward or which Registered Reports get approved for participating in the pilot. Meta will only evaluate and respond to researchers’ Data Request Forms for their Registered Reports. Instead, COS will evaluate researcher eligibility, and the Editorial Board they established will oversee the independent review and selection of Registered Report submissions. For more details, see the Request for Proposals and User Guide.

You must first submit your Stage 1 RR to the Lifecycle Journal and receive in-principle acceptance before accessing the data. If the Stage 1 Registered Report is accepted, you will coordinate with Meta for data access and your Stage 1 Registered Report, peer reviews, and editorial decision will be made public as part of COS’s Lifecycle Journal, with Editor-approved exceptions or embargos for ethical or proprietary concerns. 

Yes. Researchers must submit evidence of approval by a university ethics committee or IRB with their Stage 1 Registered Report before in-principle acceptance is confirmed.

Researchers should avoid including information about their identities or hypotheses so that Meta remains blind to those considerations when evaluating data availability requests. As a result, the evaluation of Data Request Forms will be focused on whether the data is feasible to make available as part of this pilot program.

Meta aims to provide a list of data in the User Guide that covers a wide range of features and experiences on Instagram that would have research utility, balanced against the privacy of research participants and other users on our platform, as well as feasibility. The list of data provided in the User Guide aims to be sufficiently comprehensive to conduct research on the topics listed in the Request for Proposals (RFP). Researchers may request additional data in their Data Request Forms that they believe are more valuable for their research. Access the User Guide here.

Researchers can request either up to 30 days of prospective data or up to 30 days of data for retrospective data for each instance of consent. If researchers require more than 30 days of data for each Instagram user in their sample, they would need to recontact the user for consent to share additional data, subject to the same 30 day limit. 

Pilot researchers will have access to the Instagram data in the third-party cleanroom for up to 15 months after the initial data delivery with extensions for access considered on a case-by-case basis. 

Approved reproduction researchers will have access to the Instagram data in the third-party cleanroom for up to 6 months after approval within the three year period after the Stage 2 Registered Report is published.

Meta is able to fund researcher access to consented and authorized Instagram data in the third-party cleanroom for these limited time periods within the expected timeline for the pilot, which anticipates data collection, analysis, and publication will be completed within 12 months. 

Other researchers will only be able to access the Instagram data from the pilot for the purposes of reproducing the accepted Stage 2 Registered Report for which the data was shared. 

After the Stage 2 Registered Reports are published, other academic researchers with ethical approval (e.g., institutional review board [IRB]) may request access to the data to reproduce the results of any of the published Stage 2 Registered Reports. Reproduction refers to obtaining the same results for the same research questions and hypotheses using the same input data, methodological procedures and computations steps, and conditions of analysis. Reproduction is a valuable open science practice, which increases the transparency and accountability of scientific research, as well as trust in the research findings.

The pilot program was designed to promote the values of open science (i.e. transparency, reproducibility, and rigor). Making research artifacts openly available is in line with these values and thus is encouraged or required (where applicable) throughout the pilot program.

Below is a summary of the reporting expectations for Stage 1 and 2 RRs detailing which materials can (or must) be open at each step of the process.

Stage 1 Registered Report Reporting Expectations

Stage 2 Registered Report Reporting Expectations

Details on the Lifecycle Journal can be found here.

All Lifecycle Journal publications will be openly licensed (CC-BY) allowing the content to be reused elsewhere. Authors will have the option to assign a Version of Record (VOR) declaring the work completed and published in Lifecycle Journals; if they do not assign a VOR, they will have the option to submit the completed work elsewhere.

An objective of the Lifecycle Journal is to introduce innovations that will transform the vision and value of journals into effective facilitators of knowledge production and self-correction. One of these innovations is incorporating several human, machine, and empirical evaluations in a dynamic marketplace of credibility assessments.

For example, a service like FAIRsharing might provide authors with feedback about the quality of the documentation of shared data and materials that can be used to improve their usability. The full array of evaluation services will diversify assessment and increase engagement with the quality of the scholarly work submitted through the Lifecycle Journal project. 

These evaluations are intended to deepen scholarly engagement with the research produced in this pilot program and will not affect decision-making by the editorial board.

No. Participation in the Lifecycle Journal experimental evaluation services is an expectation for participation in the pilot program as a whole. 

At this time, we can only accept and provide materials in English.

If your preproposal submission is found ineligible, COS will contact you within 5 business days of your original submission until the submission deadline on September 5th. If COS communicates that your proposal is found ineligible due to a “fixable” error (e.g. missing email address, forgotten question, formatting, etc.), you will have the opportunity to submit a new response to the preproposal form with corrected information until the September 5th deadline.