A Tentative Roadmap for Consensus-Building Processes

Like all other branches of science, psychology is constantly faced with the task of establishing some level of preliminary consensus over term use, methods, and findings, while at the same time leaving open the door to challenging and revising that consensus when necessary. Suboptimal solutions in this regard are likely to lead to inefficient use of resources, and to impede the cumulative acquisition of knowledge. The current culture and incentive structure in academia does not encourage systematic consensus work enough, and there are no clear guidelines as to how this crucial kind of work is to be engaged with. We present a tentative roadmap intended to facilitate systematic consensus building processes (CBPs). It contains a long and diverse list of issues that researchers undertaking consensus work may want to consider before and during a CBP. In discussing these issues, we point to potential complications and offer recommendations on how to avoid them. This mostly concerns questions of communication, transparency, fairness, integrity and legitimacy. We assume that dealing with these topics explicitly and from the get-go will substantially increase the likelihood of a CBP to be successful.