Time cost tracking during FAIR research workflow practices

There are three central entities living in the scientific ecosystem: scientific knowledge, open scientists, and scientific data. In the recent years, scientific knowledge reported in the empirical journals of many scientific disciplines was found irreplicable. Open scientists who are committed to open science practices to prevent irreproducible research are deeply concerned about the extra time costs of these practices. In the FAIR research workflow project (https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yhj5c), we aim to demonstrate the extra time costs of FAIR research practices by tracking the time costs of FAIR practices of Author Z.Z., a PhD student in human cognitive neuroscience, over two years. This dataset is raw data of time tracking records of this practice. Over the two years, two templates were employed (The first one from Sep. 9, 2022 to Mar. 10, 2023; the second one from Mar. 10, 2023 to Apr. 19, 2024). The summary results show that FAIR practices only result in the time costs of less than 8% of total working hours of Author Z.Z., illustrating the limited potential time expenditure of open science committment in human cognitive neuroscience. However, it is to note that these results may not be generalizable to other researchers in the relevant field or other fields. A better estimate of time costs of open science engagement demands time tracking of a larger sample size across disciplines.