Library Guides: Reproducibility in Research: Pre-Registration

What is pre-registration?

Image Source: https://plos.org/open-science/preregistration/

When you preregister your research, you're simply specifying your research plan in advance of your study and submitting it to a registry.

Why Pre-Register your Protocol

Improves your research by increasing the credibility of your results
Allows you to stake your claim to your ideas earlier
It's an easy way to plan for better research

Where to Pre-Register your Study

Pre-registration Platforms:

As Predicted
AsPredicted is a free pre-registration platform managed by the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Credibility Lab. It allows researchers to pre-register their studies and search, read, and evaluate other pre-registrations.
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry and results database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world. A service of the U.S. National Institutes of Health
Open Science Framework Pre-registration
The OSF repository for pre-registrations.
PROSPERO
PROSPERO accepts registrations for systematic reviews, rapid reviews and umbrella reviews. Before registering a new systematic review, check PROSPERO and the resources on COVID-END to see whether a similar review already exists.

Search, Evaluate, & Read Other Preregistrations:

Open Science Framework Registries
Use the OSF registries network to search for examples.

Ex. https://osf.io/jsznk

Journal Preregistration Example:

The journal Developmental Science is an example of a journal that is using OSF’s Registries platform for registering research prior to conducting a study. Registered studies go through a two-stage peer review process: (1) peer review of the proposed methods/protocols with “in-principal” acceptance and (2) peer review of final results in the manuscript with publication following as long as authors adhere to the registered protocols.