Registered Reports as the default pathway for confirmatory publication
Abstract
By rewarding speed, volume, and coherent positive narratives, traditional publishing incentivizes questionable scientific practices and analytic flexibility. The latter especially contributes to blurring the distinction between exploration and confirmation, which inflates the apparent strength of confirmatory claims. This systemic issue has gone unchecked for decades, leaving the scientific community with a body of scholarly literature that is unreliable and lacking validity. Registered Reports (RRs) address problematic publishing practices by requiring a priori registration of confirmatory tests, which is peer-reviewed before the research begins (stage 1). The editorial acceptance of a stage 1 plan establishes a commitment to publication regardless of research outcomes. Publication remains, nonetheless, contingent on a second peer review and editorial scrutiny (stage 2) to verify that the approved plan was followed, all deviations were transparently disclosed and justified, confirmatory and exploratory claims are clearly delineated, and the integrity of the design was maintained. Meta-scientific comparisons indicate that RRs reduce outcome-based publication bias and improve methodological rigor without compromising perceived novelty. By making accepted RR protocols and their review history citable research outputs, RRs also strengthen recognition for peer-review work. In this perspective, we argue that RRs should become the primary mode of confirmatory publication moving forward.
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BibTeX
@misc{topor2026registered,
title = {{Registered Reports as the default pathway for confirmatory publication}},
author = {Marta Topor and Joshua S. Bamford and Marina Bazhydai and Zhang Chen and Hu Chuan-Peng and Clare Conry-Murray and Thiago Leiros Costa and Antica Culina and Mario Dalmaso and Zoltan Dienes},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/cn59h_v2},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cn59h_v2/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Registered Reports as the default pathway for confirmatory publication
AU - Marta Topor
AU - Joshua S. Bamford
AU - Marina Bazhydai
AU - Zhang Chen
AU - Hu Chuan-Peng
AU - Clare Conry-Murray
AU - Thiago Leiros Costa
AU - Antica Culina
AU - Mario Dalmaso
AU - Zoltan Dienes
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/cn59h_v2
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cn59h_v2/
AB - By rewarding speed, volume, and coherent positive narratives, traditional publishing incentivizes questionable scientific practices and analytic flexibility. The latter especially contributes to blurring the distinction between exploration and confirmation, which inflates the apparent strength of confirmatory claims. This systemic issue has gone unchecked for decades, leaving the scientific community with a body of scholarly literature that is unreliable and lacking validity. Registered Reports (RRs) address problematic publishing practices by requiring a priori registration of confirmatory tests, which is peer-reviewed before the research begins (stage 1). The editorial acceptance of a stage 1 plan establishes a commitment to publication regardless of research outcomes. Publication remains, nonetheless, contingent on a second peer review and editorial scrutiny (stage 2) to verify that the approved plan was followed, all deviations were transparently disclosed and justified, confirmatory and exploratory claims are clearly delineated, and the integrity of the design was maintained. Meta-scientific comparisons indicate that RRs reduce outcome-based publication bias and improve methodological rigor without compromising perceived novelty. By making accepted RR protocols and their review history citable research outputs, RRs also strengthen recognition for peer-review work. In this perspective, we argue that RRs should become the primary mode of confirmatory publication moving forward.
ER -