Preregistration and Coffee: Three perspectives on planning for transparency

Preregistration involves recording a study’s hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans before data collection begins. This simple step helps protect against questionable research practices such as HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known) and p-hacking (running analyses until a significant result appears). By time-stamping study plans, preregistration makes it clear which findings are confirmatory—based on prior hypotheses—and which are exploratory discoveries that emerged later.

Registered reports take this one step further: the study design and analysis plan are peer-reviewed before data collection, and if accepted, the paper is guaranteed publication regardless of the results. This model helps address publication bias—the tendency for only “positive” or statistically significant results to be published—and encourages more rigorous research designs. Ultimately, preregistration and Registered Reports promote a culture of transparency. They shift the focus of peer review from eye-catching results to well-designed methods, help reduce false discoveries, and make it easier for others (and for your future self) to understand and reproduce your work.

Yet, GhentCORR’s recent landscape survey showed that preregistration is still the least known and least used open research practice at Ghent University. That’s why we kicked off our “& Coffee” series with this topic—to demystify preregistration, share hands-on experiences, and show that any researcher can benefit from it.

At the session, three Ghent University researchers shared how they’ve approached preregistration and Registered Reports in very different contexts:

Annick De Paepe introduced Peer Community In (PCI)— a non-profit scientific organisation that provides an open editorial process by creating researcher-led communities that peer review and recommend preprints in their field. The process starts with publishing a preprint, which is then submitted to the relevant PCI community for review for peer review. After positive peer review, researchers receive a public recommendation that accompanies the preprint.

Within PCI, the PCI Registered Reports community focuses specifically on preregistered studies and Registered Reports (RRs). When an RR receives a positive recommendation, authors can choose to publish in the Peer Community Journal or in one of the PCI RR–friendly journals that have committed to accepting PCI RR recommendations without further peer review. It’s an open and transparent process, though Annick noted that PCI-friendly journals can be limited in number in certain disciplines.

Sophia Knoch & Reinoud Allaert shared their experience with Registered Reports at the Royal Society Open Science. They opted for the fast-track (scheduled review) route which was a bit stressful due to tight deadlines, but forced them to work efficiently. Timing was also tricky: the animals in their study didn’t wait for reviewer comments. Their natural breeding and sampling windows meant data collection had to start at specific times, making coordination with the review process a real challenge. Moreover, every change in protocol had to be communicated to the editors, which can be difficult in animal research, where unexpected adjustments are common. Despite these hurdles, they both agreed that the process significantly improved the quality of their methodology and study design and increased confidence in their results.

Louise Poppe is currently preparing a Registered Report for Peer Community In Registered Reports (PCI RR)—a process still uncommon in the field of Public Health. Her work involves secondary analysis of existing, publicly available datasets, which brings specific challenges.First, she has little control over how data are collected or whether data collection protocols might change. Second, because it’s data that already exist—and that the author may have some prior knowledge about—the risk of bias is higher, as recognised by PCI RR’s levels of bias control. Despite these complexities, Louise sees preregistration as a valuable learning opportunity—a way to strengthen analytical planning, make her assumptions transparent, and contribute to improving reproducibility in a field where preregistration is still rare.

The audience was highly engaged, leading to lively discussions that reflected both enthusiasm and critical reflection. Participants raised practical questions about time investment, review quality, and how preregistration fits within the realities of research assessment. Some noted that platforms like Peer Community In depend on the availability and expertise of recommenders and reviewers, which can vary across disciplines and occasionally slow down the process. Others wondered how preregistration interacts with the current publication system—where impact factor and open-access fees still play a major role. As Annick explained, preregistration isn’t an impediment: even if researchers aim for a traditional journal later, a PCI recommendation can accompany—and even strengthen—the submission.

A particularly engaging exchange revolved around whether PhD students should preregister their studies. Do they have the skills to write a high-quality registered report so early in their careers? The flip side of that question, as one of the speakers noted, is that perhaps this is exactly why they should. Preregistration helps build robust study protocols from the start, and supervisors can—and arguably should—play a key role in guiding that process.

References and acknowledgements

Stewart, S., Rinke, E. M., McGarrigle, R., Lynott, D., Lunny, C., Lautarescu, A., Galizzi, M. M., Farran, E. K., & Crook, Z. (2020). Pre-registration and Registered Reports: a Primer from UKRN. Center for Open Science. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/8v2n7

This blog post was written by the GhentCORR core team with editorial assistance from OpenAI ChatGPT to support text refinement and consistency.