Pre-registration and registered reports

Authors

Marieke Heers

PDF
Publication

FORS Guide Nº 09

DOI
https://doi.org/10.24449/FG-2020-00009
How to cite

Heers, M. (2020). Pre-registration and registered reports. FORS Guides, 9, Version 1.1, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.24449/FG-2020-00009


Keywords

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

Abstract

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.

Recommendations

  • 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.

    • Copyright

    Copyright: © the authors 2020. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

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