Should we publish pledges?

[CooperSmout]

During a breakout room at the recent SORTEE conference, Daniel Mietchen suggested an intriguing idea: what if we were to develop a common (machine-readable) format for the various pledges that researchers take and publish these pledges in an indexed journal. This could help to increase visibility of the pledges, provide citeable DOIs, celebrate researchers who commit to positive action, and facilitate searches/meta-research on the pledge space (because everything would now be machine-readable). Daniel also pointed out that Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) already publishes a variety of 'alternative' research outputs beyond articles and could thus incorporate this new pledge format relatively easily.

In the context of collective action campaigns on Free Our Knowledge, this could be a great way to celebrate when we reach the target number of signatures and pledges go live. For example, in our Preregistration Pledge we're aiming to get 100 pledges in any particular field (psychology is almost there with 73 pledges!) before we hold people accountable to their pledges. If and when we reach this target, we could publish the pledge details in RIO and list everyone who has taken the pledge as a co-author (with their permission of course). This could then be something that those researchers can point to in their CV, as a demonstration of their commitment to open science, and also something that we can cite in future pledges and publications (e.g., in any papers resulting from those 100 preregistered studies), potentially starting a feedback cycle that increases mainstream awareness/adoption of these pledges.

What do you think about this idea? Would it motivate you/others to take more pledges? Would you give your permission to co-author a 'pledge publication' in this way, for a pledge that you've taken?

Note: this question is also mirrored on the Ask Open Science forum