Registered Reports, five years on: A vaccine against bias in research and publishing

In 2013, Cortex became the first journal to offer Registered Reports, a format of preregistered empirical publication in which peer review happens prior to data collection and analysis (see https://cos.io/rr/). The aim of Registered Reports is to overcome publication bias and researcher bias (e.g. selective reporting of statistically significant results and hindsight bias), by performing peer review in part before studies commence. Publishability is then decided by the importance of the research question and quality of the methodology, and never based on the results of hypothesis testing.

In this talk I will introduce the concept of Registered Reports and provide an update on its progress at at Cortex and beyond, including its uptake by prominent journals such as Nature Human Behaviour and generalist journals including Royal Society Open Science.

I will also discuss preliminary evidence of impacts on the field and emerging Registered Report funding models in which journals and funders simultaneously assess proposed protocols. Together with allied initiatives, Registered Reports are helping to reshape the incentive structure of the life and social sciences to place theory, transparency and reproducibility at the core of our scientific mission.