What kind of science do we want? This is a broad question, and yet most people can readily provide answers. We want our science to be reliable, something that we can have confidence in. We want it to be rigorous, relying on state-of-the-art methods and analytic techniques. We want it to be cumulative, creating a sense of progress toward our shared goals. We want it to be meaningful, connected to the people we seek to help. We want it to be healthy, supported by incentives that promote, rather than undermine, the well-being of scientists.
Unfortunately, we have been falling short of these ideals. The replication crisis in psychology that began in the early 2010s (Spellman, Reference Spellman2015) consolidated decades of concern (Gelman, Reference Gelman2016) about how we approach our science. Increasing awareness about questionable research practices, p-hacking, hypothesizing after the results are known (HARKing), publication bias, toxic “publish or perish” cultures, low statistical power, statistical literacy, lack of diversity, generalizability, low-quality theory, and practical relevance, among others, shook the foundations of the field (Munafò et al., Reference Munafò, Nosek, Bishop, Button, Chambers, Percie du Sert, Simonsohn, Wagenmakers, Ware and Ioannidis2017; Open Science Collaboration, 2015).
Problems of research practice have been identified across the full range of psychology, including social psychology (Nosek & Lakens, Reference Nosek and Lakens2014), clinical science and psychopathology (Tackett et al., Reference Tackett, Lilienfeld, Patrick, Johnson, Krueger, Miller, Oltmanns and Shrout2017), developmental (Gennetian et al., Reference Gennetian, Frank and Tamis-LeMonda2022), personality (Sotola & Credé, Reference Sotola and Credé2023), and many more. Moreover, such concerns have also been observed in other disciplines, including biomedicine (Errington et al., Reference Errington, Mathur, Soderberg, Denis, Perfito, Iorns and Nosek2021; The Brazilian Reproducibility Initiative et al., Reference Amaral, Carneiro, Neves, Sampaio, Gomes, Abreu, Tan, Mota, Goulart, Fernandes, Linhares, Ibelli, Sebollela, Andricopulo, Carvalho, Silva, Souza, Lima and Altei2025), genetics (Collins et al., Reference Collins, Morgan and Patrinos2003), behavioral ecology (Deressa et al., Reference Deressa, Stern, Vangronsveld, Minx, Lizin, Malina and Bruns2023), environmental sciences (Yang et al., Reference Yang, Hillebrand, Lagisz, Cleasby and Nakagawa2022), criminology (Bruinsma, Reference Bruinsma2016), public health (Harris et al., Reference Harris, Johnson, Carothers, Combs, Luke and Wang2018), political science (Lupia & Elman, Reference Lupia and Elman2014), and physics (Junk & Lyons, Reference Junk and Lyons2020), among many others (Rahal et al., Reference Rahal, Hamann, Brohmer and Pethig2022). Whereas the nature and degree of problems varies across fields, any discipline that has engaged in self-examination of its research processes has found something to be desired.
What about the field of developmental psychopathology? To what extent have researchers within this field engaged in self-examination and committed to practices that would improve the state of the science? In our view, not enough, and we can certainly do better. In this Views article, we argue that it is high time that research in developmental psychopathology take the problems surfaced via the replication crisis seriously and begin to take steps to improve the state of the science. We do so by advocating for the integration of Registered Reports within developmental psychopathology, which holds great promise for developing the kind of science we all want. The core message of this article is that researchers studying developmental psychopathology can and should make use of the Registered Reports format. We understand that some readers may be skeptical about whether or not Registered Reports are appropriate for the types of research they conduct. Accordingly, after introducing the format, we address 10 common myths or assumptions about Registered Reports, debunking nearly all of them. We conclude that the format is both possible and desirable for the variety of research approaches evident in the field.
Registered Reports: a publication model for modern times
With the identification of problems also comes proposed solutions. For example, some have argued for making research data, analytic code, and study materials openly available, permitting the scientific community to fully evaluate the work that underlies what is reported in articles (Vazire, Reference Vazire2017; Wicherts et al., Reference Wicherts, Borsboom, Kats and Molenaar2006). Others have advocated for preregistration, which pertains to creating a public, time-stamped, unalterable document that outlines the study design and/or analysis plan prior to implementation (Nosek et al., Reference Nosek, Ebersole, DeHaven and Mellor2018). Registered Reports reflects an extension of preregistration, of sorts, and is a powerful intervention because it simultaneously addresses several long-standing issues in the field (Chambers, Reference Chambers2013).
The unreliability of our scientific knowledge has been baked into the system via our long-standing publication model. Many years ago, Sterling (Reference Sterling1959) identified a 97% “success” rate across four journals in psychology, meaning that 97% of published articles reported statistically significant support of the central hypotheses. This success rate is strikingly similar to what has been observed in recent studies (Open Science Collaboration, 2015; Scheel et al., Reference Scheel, Schijen and Lakens2021). Such success strains credibility. Either researchers in psychology are particularly clairvoyant (Bones, Reference Bones2012), only test hypotheses that are true (Ingre & Nilsonne, Reference Ingre and Nilsonne2018), or there is some kind of flaw in our publication model.
We favor the latter explanation, and can clearly identify the flaw in the model: publication bias. Publication bias refers to a variety of behaviors that lead to distortions in the scientific literature (Ferguson & Heene, Reference Ferguson and Heene2012). These behaviors can come from journals, editors, and reviewers, who show bias towards statistically significant findings (Mahoney, Reference Mahoney1977), including those that are seen as novel or surprising. They also can show bias against findings that run contrary to prevailing scientific or sociocultural views. These behaviors also come from authors, who select which results to report and which manuscripts to submit for publication based on their expectations of how journals will respond. Publication bias provides a context that incentivizes undesirable research behavior. That is, problems such as questionable research practices, p-hacking, and HARKing primarily exist due to the pressures of needing statistically significant results in order to get published (Bakker et al., Reference Bakker, van Dijk and Wicherts2012).
It doesn’t have to be this way. The current publishing system is not natural nor inevitable; it was a system created in a particular time and context, which has evolved only minimally with changing technology and scientific understanding. In the current system we primarily select articles for publication based on the nature of the results, asking the questions: Are these findings interesting? Are they novel? Are they useful? Selecting for the nature of results is how we get exciting findings based on flawed methods and statistics, and is how we get massive publication bias.
An alternative, stronger approach is to instead select articles for publication based on the quality of the conceptualization and design. This is the intention behind Registered Reports (Chambers & Tzavella, Reference Chambers and Tzavella2022). Registered Reports represent a break from our traditional publishing model by separating the review process into two stages (Figure 1). At Stage 1, authors submit the Introduction, Method, and Planned Analysis sections to a journal for peer review. They do this before conducting the study, in the case of new data collection, or before conducting the analysis, in the case of preexisting data. From there, the review process looks similar to the traditional model: reviewers and editors provide feedback on the study plans, the authors revise their plans, and they continue this cycle until all parties are satisfied. At that point, the journal issues an in-principle acceptance, meaning that not only can the researchers now carry out the study, but that the journal has committed to publishing the study regardless of the results. Once the researchers complete the study, they add the Results and Discussion sections to the previous Stage 1 manuscript to create a Stage 2 manuscript, which is submitted back to the journal for review. At this stage, the job of the editor and reviewers is to ensure that the authors carried out the plans as specified and did so competently, and that they report deviations from the plans in a transparent and well-motivated way. Because the journal has already committed to publishing the study, there cannot be any requests to revise the conceptualization or design of the study, and the paper cannot be rejected because it yielded null or mixed results. Thus, rather than asking, “are these results interesting?,” with Registered Reports we ask the question, “is this study informative, regardless of the results?”
Figure 1. A full workflow for the review process of Registered Reports. Used with permission from the Center for Open Science under CC BY 4.0.
There are now over 300 journals across the sciences that have adopted Registered Reports, with the majority being in psychology (Montoya et al., Reference Montoya, Krenzer and Fossum2021). Many of these include outlets with close ties to developmental psychopathology, including Developmental Psychology, Child Development, Developmental Science, Infant and Child Development, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, and Nature Human Behavior, as well as others (see full list: https://www.cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports).
The empirical evidence investigating Registered Reports is promising, albeit limited. There is some initial evidence that reviewers of Registered Reports rate them as more rigorous than standard reports along numerous dimensions, both before and after knowing the findings of the study (Soderberg et al., Reference Soderberg, Errington, Schiavone, Bottesini, Thorn, Vazire, Esterling and Nosek2021). Scheel et al. (Reference Scheel, Schijen and Lakens2021) found that the frequency with which the first hypothesis was supported in standard reports was 96%, compared with only 44% in Registered Reports, with the difference being similar for replication studies as for original research. Allen and Mehler (Reference Allen and Mehler2019) similarly found that 40% of hypotheses were supported in Registered Reports, using a sample that partially overlapped with the one used in Scheel et al. (Reference Scheel, Schijen and Lakens2021)Footnote 1 . These observations align closely with our own experience as editors and authors of Registered Reports, where we suddenly see null results appear everywhere.
At the same time, not everything is sunshine and roses. Journals are not always sufficiently clear in their policies and procedures for Registered Reports (Montoya et al., Reference Montoya, Krenzer and Fossum2021). Moreover, although computational reproducibility is higher with Registered Reports than standard reports, it is still not as high as one would like or expect (Obels et al., Reference Obels, Lakens, Coles, Gottfried and Green2020). Finally, the small set of studies to date has not yet been able to rule out several potential confounds in comparisons of Registered Reports and standard reports, such as differences in the riskiness of the hypotheses that are tested or researchers’ motivations and diligence when reporting on the study (see Scheel et al., Reference Scheel, Schijen and Lakens2021, for further discussion).
Despite the steady increase and generally positive evidence for Registered Reports, in our view the uptake among researchers in developmental psychopathology has been slow. The establishment of Registered Reports at Development and Psychopathology is thus a welcome change, and one that meets a call that has come from within its pages (Hanson et al., Reference Hanson, Kahhalé and Sen2024; see also Nivison et al., Reference Nivison, Caldo, Magro, Raby, Groh, Vandell, Booth-LaForce, Fraley, Carlson, Simpson and Roisman2025). Moreover, there are some within our research community who have already conducted Registered Reports, including studies based on existing datasets, such as Vermeent et al. (Reference Vermeent, Young, DeJoseph, Schubert and Frankenhuis2024) using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and Nivison et al. (Reference Nivison, Dagan, Booth-LaForce, Roisman and Waters2024) using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.
Registered Reports also have the potential to improve the well-being of scientists (Frankenhuis & Nettle, Reference Frankenhuis and Nettle2018; Wagenmakers & Dutilh, Reference Wagenmakers and Dutilh2016). First, they reduce the chokehold of needing to find “positive” results; rather, we can just relax while letting the data speak. Second, they reward quality, which is under our control; rather than outcomes, which are not (or at least, should not be). Third, they enable us to explore data transparently and comfortably; without the uneasy feeling that we are blurring the lines between preplanned and data-driven analyses. Fourth, the review process for Registered Reports seems to be more constructive than that for standard reports. After all, there is more scope for reviewers to provide suggestions, and for authors to incorporate them, before a study has taken place. Finally, Registered Reports can improve the meaningfulness of our work, as part of the review process may involve assessing whether or not the study is worth doing; that is, will the study make the contribution to the scientific literature or have the translational impact that the authors hope it will? Altogether, a win-win for research and researchers.
In our experience, researchers’ lack of familiarity with the format and how it works is a major barrier to them pursuing Registered Reports in their own work. Accordingly, in the remainder of this article, we address 10 commonly expressed concerns, arguing that they are either myths or not as serious as imagined (see Briker & Gerpott, Reference Briker and Gerpott2024, for some data on beliefs among researchers in management and applied psychology).
Registered Reports are appropriate for research with existing datasets
The very common concern that Registered Reports are only appropriate for certain types of study designs is almost always wrong. Much of the initial development and implementation of Registered Reports did indeed occur in the context of new data gathered via lab experiments (Chambers, Reference Chambers2013), a context that does not reflect the full breadth of research in developmental psychopathology. Rather, our field relies heavily on longitudinal data, analyses of secondary data, and potentially identifying data, all of which are less controlled than lab experiments.
The good news is that this problem has been long known and fully addressed. A recent special issue of Child Development featuring Registered Reports (Syed et al., Reference Syed, Frank and Roisman2023) included articles across nearly the full spectrum of developmental science, including lab studies, interventions, meta-analysis, and national public data. Similarly, a special issue of Journal of Research in Personality featured studies using longitudinal, secondary, and sensitive data (Tackett et al., Reference Tackett, Ritchie, Syed and Weston2021). Two special issues have focused specifically on Registered Reports with secondary data (Davis-Kean et al., Reference Davis-Kean, Ellis and Syed2024; Syed & Donnellan, Reference Syed and Donnellan2020), and there is both a template for preregistering secondary data analyses (https://osf.io/x4gzt/), and an associated tutorial paper (van den Akker et al., Reference Van den Akker, Weston, Campbell, Chopik, Damian, Davis-Kean, Hall, Kosie, Kruse, Olsen, Ritchie, Valentine, Veer and Bakker2021). Guidelines and recommendations have also been developed for Registered Reports with qualitative studies (Demkowicz & Hickman Dunne, Reference Demkowicz and Hickman Dunne2024; Karhulahti et al., Reference Karhulahti, Branney, Siutila and Syed2023). Peer Community in (PCI) Registered Reports – a journal-independent preprint review service – has developed extensive resources and guidelines for preparing Registered Reports that covers a wide variety of study designs (see https://rr.peercommunityin.org/; (PCI Registered Reports, n.d.).
Whereas Registered Reports can be conducted with preexisting data, doing so requires close consideration of researchers’ prior knowledge of the data. The situation is not as simple as thinking dichotomously in terms of new or existing data. With large-scale datasets, researchers may have previously worked with some measures or sub-samples but not others, or may have worked with prior waves in an ongoing longitudinal project. All of these scenarios may be well-suited to conducting a Registered Report. What is important is that researchers are transparent about their experience with the data, and we suggest including a subsection titled “Prior knowledge of the data” to make it clear to readers (see Duncan et al., Reference Duncan, Nordgren, Schmitt and Vandell2024 and Spiegler et al., Reference Spiegler, Zingora and Jugert2024, for examples). PCI Registered Reports have developed a helpful bias-control taxonomy for researchers to understand and declare their prior knowledge of the data, if any (PCI Registered Reports, n.d.).
An additional consideration when conducting Registered Reports with preexisting data is that the review process may be more likely to identify “fatal flaws” in the Stage 1 proposal that cannot be addressed as the data have already been collected, a situation not relevant to Registered Reports based on new data collection. Thus, altogether there are clearly additional constraints when it comes to conducting Registered Reports with preexisting data, but they are nevertheless possible and, indeed, desirable.
Registered Reports allow for exploratory research
Registered Reports are perfectly consistent with conducting exploratory analyses. Researchers are welcome to conduct as many nonregistered exploratory analyses as they wish, but they must be clearly labeled as such. Moreover, the inferences based on these analyses need to be appropriately calibrated (e.g., as having weaker evidentiary value than confirmatory analyses, or as generating hypotheses to be tested in future research), and they cannot be overly highlighted in the manuscript (e.g., the abstract cannot report only the exploratory findings, without mentioning the outcomes of the preregistered confirmatory analyses).
Some researchers claim to conduct only exploratory research, and so the hypothesis-testing focus of Registered Reports is not well-suited. This may be the case and that is fine; exploratory research is crucial for science. If you are truly engaging in an exploratory study, then the Registered Report format might not be a good fit. The argument is not that every study needs to be a Registered Report. However, it is crucial that exploratory research is reported as such, rather than masquerading as confirmatory. As Daniel Nettle (Reference Nettle2021) notes, “People often misunderstand the preregistration revolution as being the requirement to only do confirmatory analyses. But (…) it’s not this at all. It’s the freedom to do confirmatory analyses when these are appropriate, and exploratory ones when these are appropriate, and be clear and unashamed about which it really is: don’t muddle the one with the trappings of the other.”
That said, in our experience, researchers will often claim they are conducting exploratory research, but in reality they have clear hypotheses that they seek to test – sometimes more tentatively referred to as “expectations.” Such an approach is ill-advised; if you have hypotheses, you should state them clearly and test them appropriately, preferably via a Registered Report.
Registered Reports can increase theoretical rigor
A concern expressed about science reform efforts is that they are too focused on procedures – checklists, standards, and rules – at the expense of core concerns such as theory, validity, and inference (e.g., Penders, Reference Penders2022). At first glance, this criticism could be levied at Registered Reports, which seem to emphasize planning and protocol over serendipity and exploration. As we have already discussed, and will elaborate later, these perceptions are ill-founded. In fact, Registered Reports can facilitate theoretically-rich research and are well-suited to improving theory. Psychology has long been plagued by a reliance on vaguely specified verbal theories (Borsboom et al., Reference Borsboom, van der Maas, Dalege, Kievit and Haig2021; Frankenhuis, Panchanathan, et al., Reference Frankenhuis, Panchanathan and Smaldino2023; Fried, Reference Fried2020; Guest & Martin, Reference Guest and Martin2021; Smaldino, Reference Smaldino2020; van Rooij & Baggio, Reference van Rooij and Baggio2021). Despite the fact that theory is central to research on developmental psychopathology in general, and in the pages of Development and Psychopathology in particular, the vast majority of theories in the field are gravely underspecified. That is, there is a lack of clarity about the observations that would be consistent or inconsistent with the theory. Rather, most theories are sufficiently flexible that nearly any pattern of data can be claimed as showing support. For instance, a theory can be re-interpreted more expansively to absorb data outside of its original scope (theory stretching), or more narrowly so the theory appears more precisely aligned with the data (post hoc precision; Frankenhuis, Panchanathan, et al., Reference Frankenhuis, Panchanathan and Smaldino2023). Moreover, there are few constraints on the number and type of tests that a researcher can conduct to find support for a vaguely specified theory. Taken together, these practices slow, rather than contribute to, theory development.
Registered Reports can be helpful in this regard. As completed empirical products, Registered Reports will generally provide reliable results that can be used to build and refine theories. The format can also be used to generate stronger tests of existing theories. When implemented well, they encourage greater specificity about predictions that constitute stronger tests of hypotheses than standard reports. The degree to which they do so, however, depends on those involved. It is incumbent on researchers to work to improve specificity as a path to greater theoretical specification, and it is incumbent on reviewers and editors to demand it. A good starting point is to become familiar with the concepts of theoretical and empirical estimands, which pertain to what specific quantity we seek to estimate and how we will go about doing so (Lundberg et al., Reference Lundberg, Johnson and Stewart2021). With more time and experience, researchers can then begin to use computational modeling and simulations as a way to work out their theoretical expectations (Fraley et al., Reference Fraley, Roisman and Haltigan2013; Frankenhuis, Borsboom, et al., Reference Frankenhuis, Borsboom, Nettle and Roisman2023; Frankenhuis, Panchanathan, et al., Reference Frankenhuis, Panchanathan and Smaldino2023; Grahek et al., Reference Grahek, Schaller and Tackett2021) and even make hypothesis tests machine-readable (Lakens & DeBruine, Reference Lakens and DeBruine2021; Van Lissa, Reference Van Lissa2023). The value of this level of specificity is evident with replication studies, in which there is often disagreement about whether or not a particular replication attempt was successful in replicating the original result. This situation arises because there is not one criterion for determining replication (i.e., not a single estimand), and so researchers can selectively focus on estimands after their values are known. Setting the terms for what would constitute a successful replication before seeing the results is one way to contribute to a theoretically progressive field. At Development and Psychopathology, researchers conducting replications are encouraged to do so as Registered Reports, or even as Registered Replication Reports, which constitute coordination across many independent research labs to each carry out an identical study protocol and then aggregate the results (Simons et al., Reference Simons, Holcombe and Spellman2014).
Registered Reports allow for deviations from the research plan
When journals guarantee publication following the in-principle acceptance, that guarantee is conditional on researchers carrying out the study as approved, and doing so competently. But most studies don’t go quite as planned. If you have received an in-principle acceptance for your project and anticipate some necessary changes to the study, the best course of action is to get in touch with the editor who issued the decision (Henderson & Chambers, Reference Henderson and Chambers2022). They may provide approval for the changes, may determine that the changes need to be passed by the reviewers, or perhaps are grounds for withdrawal of the in-principle acceptance. If changes need to be made on the fly (e.g., during a testing session), authors may contact the editor afterwards and explain why they deviated from their plan. In our experience, editors tend to be sympathetic and supportive; however, we are not aware of empirical research on this topic. In general, though, a nice feature of Registered Reports is that they create a system in which dialog between parties is baked into the process, and authors would be wise to take full advantage. If the manuscript ultimately must be withdrawn as a Registered Report, the authors always have the option to conduct the study anyway and submit it as a traditional manuscript (while having benefited from the Stage 1 reviewer feedback).
Registered Reports do not require embracing “open science”
Open science is a broad term with no singular agreed-upon definition (see Silverstein et al., Reference Silverstein, Elman, Montoya, McGillivray, Pennington, Harrison, Steltenpohl, Röer, Corker, Charron, Elsherif, Malicki, Hayes-Harb, Grinschgl, Neal, Evans, Karhulahti, Krenzer, Belaus and Syed2024). Parsons et al. (Reference Parsons, Azevedo, Elsherif, Guay, Shahim, Govaart, Norris, O’Mahony, Parker, Todorovic, Pennington, Garcia-Pelegrin, Lazić, Robertson, Middleton, Valentini, McCuaig, Baker, Collins and Aczel2022) provided a succinct and inclusive definition: “An umbrella term reflecting the idea that scientific knowledge of all kinds, where appropriate, should be openly accessible, transparent, rigorous, reproducible, replicable, accumulative, and inclusive, all which are considered fundamental features of the scientific endeavor” (p. 312). This definition clearly comprises a vast array of principles and behaviors, some of which individual researchers may value highly, whereas others they may treat with deep skepticism. Some may perceive the heavy emphasis on replicating past studies as misplaced (Feest, Reference Feest2019) or may be dubious of open science because of its perceived lack of consideration for research focused on diversity in psychology (Fuentes et al., Reference Fuentes, Zelaya, Delgado-Romero and Butt2022). Concerns about one aspect of open science, then, could lead to a rejection of all others.
The good news is that open science is not “all or nothing” (Corker, Reference Corker2018), and researchers can and should think about the principles and practices that are most relevant to their research methods and goals (Bergmann, Reference Bergmann2023; Nuijten, Reference Nuijten2019). Publishing Registered Reports does not require researchers to embrace open science generally or identify with open science in any way. Rather, open science offers a buffet of principles and practices, from which we can select those that are relevant for enhancing the quality and impact of our work (Bergmann, Reference Bergmann2023).
Registered Reports offer more benefits than preregistration alone
Preregistration has some overlap with Registered Reports, with a few crucial differences. Registered Reports subsumes preregistration, in that preregistration is automatically a part of the Registered Report publication process – this is the function of the Stage 1 proposal that receives the in-principle acceptance from the journal. Unlike with Registered Reports, preregistrations do not figure heavily into the manuscript review process. Researchers frequently deviate from their preregistration plan, which on its own is not a problem, but these deviations are too often undisclosed in the manuscript (Claesen et al., Reference Claesen, Gomes, Tuerlinckx and Vanpaemel2021; Willroth & Atherton, Reference Willroth and Atherton2024). Moreover, there is evidence that reviewers and editors rarely check the preregistration plans during the review process (Syed, Reference Syed2025). Most centrally, journals do not commit to publishing a study based on a preregistration. Researchers can produce a high-quality preregistration and engage in detailed reporting, but a journal could still reject the paper if the results are not deemed sufficiently novel or not consistent enough to warrant strong conclusions. Thus, preregistration does not sufficiently contribute to a shift away from selection based on findings and toward selection based on conceptualization and design.
Registered Reports offer greater control over timelines
There is a perception that Registered Reports take longer to publish than standard reports. It is not so clear that this is the case, and there are no good data to bring to bear, partially due to the difficulty in identifying the proper comparison (see Syed, Reference Syed2022 for discussion). It is true that the review process for Registered Reports will likely take longer given that the review is split into two stages. However, because of the in-principle acceptance of the Stage 1 proposal, Registered Reports greatly reduce engagement in the submission-rejection cycle in which manuscripts are “shopped around” until they “find a home.” Although we lack the appropriate comparative data, Registered Reports provide researchers with greater control over their timelines and with a sense of comfort that accompanies the certainty that their paper will be accepted at the journal that issued the in-principle acceptance (as illustrated in Figure 2). Additional innovations such as the scheduled review track at PCI Registered Reports, in which reviewers are lined up in advance of a future target submission date, provide researchers with even more predictability and efficiency. The preceding notwithstanding, we are well aware that there is a perception that Registered Reports take longer to publish than standard reports, and absent strong data, those perceptions cannot be empirically corroborated or refuted. Timely review is a concern for all publication formats, across all of the sciences, and as Registered Reports increase in prevalence, so too will data that can speak to this understandable concern.
Figure 2. A cartoon illustrating the anxiety over needing significant results in the traditional publishing model vs. the peace of mind that comes with Registered Reports. Used with permission from Henderson (Reference Henderson2019) under CC BY 4.0.
Registered Reports afford a more positive and collaborative review process
The purpose of the Stage 1 review process is to ensure that the proposed project will be informative of the research questions regardless of the results. This is done, as publishing generally is, with input from reviewers and an editor. Because the study has not yet been conducted, however, there could be concerns about reviewers having too great an influence over the direction and content of the study. For example, reviewers may ask researchers to answer the questions that they would like to see answered (e.g., “In your planned data collection, it would be great to also measure [reviewer’s preferred topic].”) or may request that authors use their preferred instruments (e.g., “To measure [reviewer’s preferred topic], you can use the scale I have developed”). These are certainly plausible scenarios. However, concerns about reviewers having too much power are certainly not new to Registered Reports. Authors have long complained about the demands of reviewers, so much so that “Reviewer 2” is frequently used as shorthand for the general annoyance of reviewer behavior. This is anecdotal, but in our personal experience the review process for Registered Reports is more positive and more collaborative. Not surprisingly, reframing the job of reviewers from “how do I find fault with this” to “how do I help this be the best project it can be” leads to a more positive experience for all.
There are resources to support early career researchers
Registered Reports reflect a major change in the approach to publishing research, and thus can be unsettling and disruptive to those who are used to, or comfortable with, the existing system. If you have supervisors or collaborators who are skeptical about open science, taking a gradual approach could be productive. Kathawalla et al. (Reference Kathawalla, Silverstein and Syed2021) developed a resource for “easing into” open science, which helps researchers to get started without feeling overwhelmed or experiencing a radical change to their process. Silverstein et al. (Reference Silverstein, Elman, Montoya, McGillivray, Pennington, Harrison, Steltenpohl, Röer, Corker, Charron, Elsherif, Malicki, Hayes-Harb, Grinschgl, Neal, Evans, Karhulahti, Krenzer, Belaus and Syed2024) created a parallel resource for cautious journal editors. The article, “Ten simple rules for writing a Registered Report” by Henderson & Chambers (Reference Henderson and Chambers2022) is required reading for anyone venturing into Registered Reports for the first time (as well as for those with experience). Finally, as noted, PCI Registered Reports has developed a wealth of resources to support interested researchers (PCI Registered Reports, n.d.).
It is also worth noting that Registered Reports very closely resemble how PhD dissertations are handled in the U.S. and several other countries. Students develop a proposal of their plan, which is then reviewed by a committee and ultimately approved, at which point the student can conduct the project. The (un)official contract between the student and the committee is that if they do what they proposed, and do so competently, then they will pass their final exam. That is, the PhD degree is based on strong conceptualization and design, and not contingent on producing a particular set of findings. This is nearly identical to the process of Registered Reports. If this approach is the standard for awarding PhDs, then it should be the standard for publishing research.
Registered Reports help address most malignant behaviors
Registered Reports will not solve all of the problems with how research is conducted or disseminated. Transparency itself is a positive value, but it does not ensure credibility; rather, transparency allows for a stronger assessment of credibility (Vazire, Reference Vazire2017). Researchers can still suppress null or contradictory findings and reframe exploratory findings as if they were preplanned. Journals can still display bias in the types of projects for which they issue in-principle acceptances, and can make unreasonable demands during the Stage 2 review process. And, of course, they do nothing to prevent outright fraud. The reality, however, is that Registered Reports greatly reduce these behaviors, while better aligning the values and incentives in science (Chambers & Tzavella, Reference Chambers and Tzavella2022; Nosek et al., Reference Nosek, Spies and Motyl2012). In our experience, when some of these problems have come up, it was related to editors’ lack of expertise with the format. Knowledgeable editors who are trained in how to handle Registered Reports can ensure that the practice comes as close as possible to the ideal. Fortunately, the editorial team at Development and Psychopathology meets this standard, and so researchers and readers are in good hands.
Conclusion
We opened this article asking what kind of science we want, stating that we could probably all agree that we want it to be reliable, rigorous, cumulative, meaningful, and healthy. We should also ask ourselves, is this the kind of science we currently have? Although your initial response may be affirmative, we would push back and respond that you may need to take a closer look. When people do, and if they are honest with themselves, they find something to be desired. This is not to say that all findings in our field are suspect and that we are totally lost. That is not what we are claiming, at all. But we can do better, and fortunately we have the tools to do better. Registered Reports are one such tool. As we argued in this article, Registered Reports are good for science and they are good for scientists. They are a welcome addition to the pages of Development and Psychopathology, and we hope that you will submit one soon.
Data availability statement
This manuscript does not report any data.
Acknowledgments
This manuscript does not report any data, so the TOP disclosures are not relevant, and the work was not preregistered.
Funding statement
WEF’s research has been supported by the Dutch Research Council (V1.Vidi.195.130) and the James S. McDonnell Foundation (https://doi.org/10.37717/220020502). MS did not receive any direct funding to complete this work.
Competing interests
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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