Preregistration
VU Amsterdam advises researchers to no longer start new projects in OSF. The project functionality will cease to work as of 19 February 2027. Any projects expected to be active at that time will have to move to alternative tools in order to keep sharing research documents with colleagues.
The OSF pre-registration and pre-print functionality will remain unchanged.
For further information, contact: osfadmin@vu.nl
What is preregistration?
Preregistration is the practice of specifying in advance how data will be collected and analysed. These plans are documented in time-stamped, immutable records, ensuring transparency and accountability in the research process. By clearly outlining hypothesis and methods beforehand, preregistration helps distinguish between hypothesis testing, confirmatory research and hypothesis generating research. This distinction is crucial, as presenting exploratory findings as confirmatory may increase the publishability of results, but does so at the expense of their credibility. You can read more about this in the Preregistration topic.
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
- Preregistration is also possible if you are using existing data. Templates are available at OSF Registries.
- The Preregistration Revolution covers nine scenarios in which preregistration is beneficial.
- You can visit the blog series on preregistration by the Center for Open Science.
- The Guardian: Trust in science would be improved by study pre-registration.
- Nature: A manifesto for reproducible science.
- You can visit this OSF presentation introducing the platform.
- You can visit this OSF presentation on creating your first project in OSF.