In science, reproducibility is key for making systematic progress. Scientometrics is no exception to this. Reproducibility requires that a different team can replicate the results of another team. A crisis in the reproducibility of published results has been hotly debated in fields such as biomedicine and psychology, where the irreproducibility of published research seems to have reached pervasive levels.

The causes for irreproducibility, its prevalence and consequences likely vary between scientific fields. Reflection on the situation in the field of scientometrics and informetrics was kicked-off at an international workshop on October 17, 2017 held at the ISSI2017 conference in Wuhan, China: Where do we have problems with irreproducibility in scientometrics? What might be key actions to take to address threats to the reproducibility of scientific knowledge in our field?