Research Support Handbook

Preregistration

What is preregistration?

• It is the act of specifying in advance how data will be collected and analysed.
• Preregistrations are time-stamped, immutable documents.
• Preregistrations make the distinction between hypothesis testing, confirmatory research and hypothesis generating, exploratory research more clear.
• Presenting exploratory results as confirmatory increases the publish ability of results at the expense of credibility of results.

How to preregister?

The Preregistration Challenge was an education campaign designed to introduce preregistration as a regular habit. It includes a guided workflow to help you create a preregistration.

See the COS Preregistration page for more information about preregistration and start working on your own preregistration in OSF Registries.

Resources and Further Readings

• Can you preregister if you are using existing data? Yes, see template available at osf.io/registries
• “The Preregistration Revolution”, which covers nine challenging situations in which preregistration is beneficial
• A blog series about preregistration
• The Guardian: Trust in science would be improved by study pre-registration
• Nature: A manifesto for reproducible science
• A presentation from a community member introducing OSF
• A helpful OSF presentation on how to create your first works