Pre-registration and registered reports

confirmatory research, publication bias, reporting bias, reproducibility, transparency

Pre-registration and registered reports are increasingly advocated to improve the credibility and rigor of empirical research. Pre-registration and more strongly registered reports are expected to reduce reporting and publication bias because they request researchers to define a detailed research plan before the data are collected and before the research outcome is known. Thereby, confirmatory and exploratory research can clearly be distinguished.

• For your next research project, consider pre-registration. Take a look at the pre-registration templates suggested by the OSF and van ‘t Veer and Giner-Sorolla (2016). These are valuable resources to define the aim and strategy of your upcoming research project, even if you do not (yet) want to register a plan.
• Check on the website of the journal in which would like to publish your work if it offers the option of a registered report.
• Consider pre-registration as a push to be clear and precise about your research plan (Lindsay et al., 2016).
• In your own articles, be clear about what results are confirmatory and what results are exploratory.