Chapter 3. The case of the scientific research article and lessons concerning genre change online

Although the apparatus surrounding the scientific research article (SRA) has evolved to include hyperlinks, comments, and supplementary data in online repositories, the genre itself seems stubbornly committed to its form. In itself, the lack of change is an important and notable case for genre scholarship. Recently, however, the replication crisis in the psychological and life sciences has created an exigence for genre change. The “Registered Report” is an emerging genre of SRA that responds to issues raised by the replication crisis that we will examine in this chapter. Rather than characterizing the genre in linguistic terms alone, we advance a rhetorical inquiry into the recurrent rhetorical situation to which this permutation on the scientific research article responds.

• Affiliations: 1: University of Waterloo