A peer-reviewed publication reporting that a study's primary analysis returned results statistically consistent with no effect (or, in equivalence/non-inferiority designs, consistent with no clinically meaningful difference), explicitly framed and interpreted as informative about the absence of effect.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A pre-registered RCT reporting CI of intervention effect crossing zero, interpreted as failing to support efficacy at the studied effect size

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A paper that frames a null result as positive by switching to a secondary outcome is HARKing, not honest null-result publication

Editorial commentary

Closely related to negative-result paper but emphasising statistical interpretation: a null result is one that does not reject the null hypothesis at the pre-specified threshold. Equivalence/non-inferiority trials are designed to support null-result conclusions; these are not ‘negative’ in the bias sense.

References

ICMJE Recommendations on publication of all results
Goodman 2008 ‘A dirty dozen: twelve P-value misconceptions’ Seminars in Hematology

Also known as

Null finding publication · No-effect paper

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Null result publication"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication",
  "name": "Null result publication",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication",
  "description": "A peer-reviewed publication reporting that a study's primary analysis returned results statistically consistent with no effect (or, in equivalence/non-inferiority designs, consistent with no clinically meaningful difference), explicitly framed and interpreted as informative about the absence of effect.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication",
  "sameAs": [
    "Null finding publication",
    "No-effect paper"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:06:40",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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