Registered Report

A publication format in which peer review of a study's rationale, hypotheses, and methodology happens before data collection (or before outcomes are known). If reviewers judge the protocol sound, the journal grants in-principle acceptance (IPA) — a binding editorial commitment to publish the completed study once it is executed as approved, regardless of whether the results are statistically significant or match the original hypotheses.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 23 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A psychology journal accepts a Stage 1 manuscript containing the study's background, hypotheses, and a fully specified analysis plan; after two rounds of review the editor grants in-principle acceptance. The authors then collect data exactly as planned and submit a Stage 2 manuscript with results and discussion — the journal publishes it whether or not the original hypothesis was supported.

Is an instance

A neuroscience journal's Registered Reports track requires authors to pre-specify sample size, exclusion criteria, and statistical tests at Stage 1. A later analysis the authors did not list in the approved protocol is reported in the Stage 2 manuscript in a clearly separated section labelled exploratory, distinct from the confirmatory results reviewers already vetted.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A researcher deposits a preregistration on OSF Registries before starting data collection, then submits the completed manuscript to a journal as a standard (non-Registered-Report) article after the results are in. The registry entry documents what was planned, but no journal reviewed or pre-accepted the protocol, so publication was never guaranteed — this is pre-registration, not a Registered Report.

Not an instance

A journal advertises fast turnaround or blinded review of results but still makes its accept/reject decision only after seeing the full results, with no Stage 1 protocol review and no binding in-principle-acceptance decision. Without that pre-results editorial commitment, it is not a Registered Report regardless of how it is marketed.

Designed to address publication bias and questionable research practices by decoupling editorial decisions from outcomes. Offered by over 300 journals as of 2024. The format separates Stage 1 (protocol, peer-reviewed for IPA) from Stage 2 (results paper, peer-reviewed for adherence to plan, not for excitement of findings).

References

Chambers, C. D. & Tzavella, L. (2022). ‘The past, present and future of Registered Reports.’ Nature Human Behaviour, 6(1), 29–42.
Center for Open Science, Registered Reports initiative page (cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports).

The two-stage review process, in more detail

At Stage 1, authors submit the study’s background, hypotheses, and a fully specified method and analysis plan (often with pilot data) before any data are collected or, for secondary-data studies, before the outcomes are known. Reviewers evaluate whether the question is worth asking and whether the design can actually answer it. If the protocol passes review, the journal grants in-principle acceptance (IPA) — a binding editorial commitment to publish, contingent on the approved protocol being followed. Authors then carry out the study and submit a Stage 2 manuscript adding results and discussion; any analysis not specified at Stage 1 must be reported separately and labelled exploratory rather than confirmatory.

How this differs from plain preregistration

Registered Reports and pre-registration are related but not identical. Pre-registration is unilateral researcher action — time-stamping a plan in a public registry (OSF Registries, ClinicalTrials.gov, a discipline-specific registry) before starting a study, with no independent review and no publication guarantee attached. A Registered Report is a stricter, journal-mediated version of the same underlying idea: the Stage 1 protocol typically serves as the study’s preregistration, but it is independently peer-reviewed, and passing that review carries the explicit, binding IPA commitment a plain registry entry never provides. CASRAI’s guide on preregistering a study protocol covers the registry-based practice in full; this entry covers the journal-mediated form specifically.

Why it exists: publication bias and HARKing

Because acceptance is locked in before outcomes are known, editors have no incentive to favour statistically significant or novel-looking findings over null or messy ones — directly addressing publication bias. The same design constrains HARKing (hypothesising after results are known), since the hypotheses and analysis plan are fixed and reviewed before the data exist. See also CASRAI’s metascience and replication study entries, and the related practice of avoiding p-hacking.

Current adoption (2026 update)

As of 2026, the Center for Open Science’s Registered Reports initiative page still states that over 300 journals offer Registered Reports, either as a standing submission track or through one-off special issues — the same headline figure as the 2024 note above, reconfirmed directly against cos.io rather than assumed unchanged. The format was independently proposed in 2012 at the journals Cortex and Perspectives on Psychological Science, with Chambers’ 2013 paper in Cortex commonly cited as the modern format’s founding description.

Named adopters: Nature-portfolio journals and PCI Registered Reports

Two concrete, verifiable examples of who currently runs this format. Nature Human Behaviour operates a standing Registered Reports article type with its own submission guidelines, and Nature Portfolio maintains a cross-journal Registered Reports collection page indexing this and related coverage across its titles. PCI Registered Reports (part of Peer Community In, rr.peercommunityin.org) is a separate, journal-independent route: it recruits its own recommenders to run Stage 1 and Stage 2 review on preprints, entirely outside any single journal. A list of “PCI RR-interested journals” — Nature Human Behaviour among them — have agreed to be notified when PCI Registered Reports issues an in-principle acceptance or a Stage 2 recommendation, and may then offer direct publication or streamlined further review without re-running peer review from scratch. In practice this means a single approved Stage 1 protocol can lead to publication through either path: a journal’s own in-house Registered Reports track, or a PCI RR recommendation picked up by a participating journal.

Frequently asked

Does in-principle acceptance guarantee publication no matter what? Not unconditionally — it guarantees publication provided the approved protocol was actually followed, deviations are disclosed and justified, and the study was executed competently.

Can a Registered Report include exploratory findings? Yes, but they must be clearly labelled as exploratory and kept separate from the pre-registered, confirmatory analyses reviewers vetted at Stage 1.

Is a Registered Report only for experimental studies? No — it originated in experimental psychology and neuroscience but has since spread to clinical, ecological, and computational research, including secondary-data analyses.

Is PCI Registered Reports the same as a journal’s Registered Reports track? No. PCI Registered Reports is a community-run, journal-independent review service that evaluates preprints at Stage 1 and Stage 2; a separate list of participating (“PCI RR-interested”) journals, including Nature Human Behaviour, can then offer publication based on that review rather than commissioning their own.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Registered Report"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/registered-report" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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