Dear Research Community,
I am currently working on a pre-registered report for a study I would like to do in the near future. I think pre-registering my work is an excellent thing to do, but it is still new to me. This leads to my question: Does anyone in my network have experience with this type of publication? Are there any dos and don'ts that shouldn't be overlooked along the way? Have you reviewed any reports that have been pre-published?
I am very excited to hear from you all.
All the best and warm regards,
Ben
Don't do it. Keep your research confidential until it is published in a peer reviewed article in a HI journal :)
Preregistration had already become the norm in clinical trials as a way to prevent publication bias, the tendency for many negative results to remain unpublished. Now, it is spreading through psychology and into other fields, not just to ensure those results see the light of day, but also because of a different advantage: By committing researchers to a fixed plan, it takes away some of the degrees of freedom that can skew their work.
Maybe it's not yet too late to answer... Probably you want to try a registered report. I did it myself and can fully recommend it. With registered reports you submit the theoretical and empirical background section, your research questions/hypotheses and a precise plan on how you will conduct your study (methods section) to a journal. The manuscript is then peer reviewed and if the reviewers appreciate it (mayby after some alterations) your article can be "in principle accepted". The only thing you have to do afterwards is stick to your plan and conduct the study as announced, write down your results and discussion and submit it again to the reviewers. You have the guarantee that your paper gets published, as long as you follow your plan (or provide really good reasons if you don't). Here you can find more information on registered reports and journals that participate (also HI Psychology Journals!):
https://www.cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports
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