The Reproducibility Crisis: Shining a Light Where Photo-Induced Process Descriptions Fall Short

Ensuring reproducibility should be a central priority for authors, editors, and reviewers throughout manuscript preparation and evaluation. Reports of photo-mediated processes are particularly susceptible to reproducibility challenges because their apparent simplicity often obscures how strongly reliable outcomes depend on carefully controlled and thoroughly reported experimental conditions. To assess current practice, 150 articles describing photo-mediated processes were randomly selected from high-impact journals in the Web of Science categories of "polymer science," "chemistry," and "physics." Each was evaluated for the minimum information necessary to reproduce a photo-induced process: exposure conditions (light source emission spectrum, incident irradiance, and irradiation duration), sample geometry (boundary conditions and thickness), and sample composition (identity and amount of the active chromophore and any other absorbing species). Only 8% of polymer science, 4% of chemistry, and 10% of physics papers provided sufficient detail to enable reproduction. The most significant deficiencies involved the light source; just 25% reported enough to reproduce both emission spectrum and irradiance. This work explains why each element is essential across diverse photo-induced processes and presents modeling and representative case studies illustrating the variability that arises when conditions are under-specified, using photopolymerization as a sensitive benchmark.