Registered Report

Definition: A scientific publishing format that includes an initial round of peer review of the background and methods (study design, measurement, and analysis plan); sufficiently high quality manuscripts are accepted for in-principle acceptance (IPA) at this stage. Typically, this stage 1 review occurs before data collection, however secondary data analyses are possible in this publishing format. Following data analyses and write up of results and discussion sections, the stage 2 review assesses whether authors sufficiently followed their study plan and reported deviations from it (and remains indifferent to the results). This shifts the focus of the review to the study’s proposed research question and methodology and away from the perceived interest in the study’s results.

Related terms: PCI (Peer Community In), Preregistration, Publication bias (File Drawer Problem), Research Protocol, Results-free review

References: Chambers (2013), Chambers et al. (2015), Chambers and Tzavella (2020), Findley et al. (2016), & https://www.cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports

Drafted and Reviewed by: Madeleine Pownall, Gilad Feldman, Emma Henderson, Aoife O’Mahony, Sam Parsons, Mariella Paul, Charlotte R. Pennington, Eike Mark Rinke, Timo Roettger, Olmo van den Akker, Yuki Yamada, Flávio Azevedo

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