# Pre-registration: No pain, some gain

Justine Epinat-Duclos, Viet Chau Linh Nguyen

► To cite this version:

Justine Epinat-Duclos, Viet Chau Linh Nguyen. Pre-registration: No pain, some gain. Internal communication at the CRNL, Nov 2024, BRON, France. 2024. hal-04811252v2

HAL Id: hal-04811252

https://hal.science/hal-04811252v2

Submitted on 17 Mar 2025

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# Pre-registration: No pain, some gain

Justine Epinat-Duclos & Viet Chau Linh Nguyen
On behalf of the Scientific Integrity Club

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## What is pre-registration?

The act of specifying a
research plan prior to a study
and filing it with a registry.
Each pre-registration has a
unique URL.

Aim: to separate

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Hypothesis-
generating
(exploratory)
research

Hypothesis-
testing
(confirmatory)
research

### Research plan

**Characteristics:**

* Time-stamped

* Immutable or read-only

* Created before the study*

* Submitted to a public
registry**

*Some preregistrations may
use preliminary data

**May be embargoed

**Contents:**

Study plan

* Hypothesis

* Data collection procedures

* Manipulated and measured
variables

Analysis plan

* Statistical model

* Inference criteria

## What are the current mindset & attitudes towards pre-registration?

Logg & Dorison (2021):

survey on 248 researchers

A **generational gap**:

Still **not a**
**mainstream practice:**

66% junior researchers, compared to 51 %

tenure track and 29% of tenure faculty adopted
this practice.

At the CRNL in 2023:

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17% of respondents have
pre-registered before

The distribution of pre-
registration by age was:

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A number of **doubts** and

misunderstandings

about pre-registration.

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Are they legitimate?

Can we tackle this by
debunking some of
them?

## Debunk n°1: Scooping

By making my research plan public,
others can steal my ideas!

### Why it is false?

- Pre-registration is a **proof** that it was
you, and not others, who came up
with the original idea and thought
carefully about how to conduct the
research.

- Pre-registration can be **embargoed**.

**Benefits:** increased **confidence** in
your **transparency:** reassure reviewers
and readers that researchers have not
**p-hacked** their analyses, even
unintentionally.

## Debunk n°2:
Freedom to analyse

Pre-registration limits my
freedom to explore data, since I
need to strictly follow the plan.

### Why it is false?

**Researchers CAN:**

- Include **exploratory research** to
run non-preregistered analyses.

- **Deviate** from the analysis plan
while clarifying the reasons.

**Benefits:** preregistering which
dependent variables are most
interesting will strengthen trust in
new results.

## Debunk n°3: Utility

Documenting the analysis
plan is useless, because it's
obvious to me.

### Why it is false?

**Preregistration is useful to:**

- Anticipate issues.

- Avoid planning fallacy &
hindsight bias (to forget the
plan and mistake outcomes
for original hypotheses).

**Benefits:** improving
communication & flexibility in
task allocation.

## Debunk n°4: Cost

Pre-registration adds work to my research process, it's a
cost in time and effort.
For instance, I did the same work for ethics committee
approval.

### Why it is false?

- **No added tasks**, only their order modified.

- Greatly facilitates the redaction of the final manuscript.

- Preregistration content can be inspired by other pre-existing elements (e.g. the analysis plan specified in ethics committee approval).

- Less expensive revision (avoid redesigning experiments
and collecting new data).

- Avoid the risk of a preregistered replication being
required by reviewers.

## Debunk n°5: Peer (un)pressure

Others don't do it, why should I?

### Why it is false?

- If you are yourself convinced by the
previous points, just don't wait for others
to do it!

- If it's not yet mainstream at your
institution, initiating the tendency might
lead to a snowball effect in the future.

- Increase your visibility.

**Benefits:** by engaging in promoting open
science and scientific integrity, as well as
increasing your visibility, you can **conduct**
studies (hopefully pre-registered) on this
topic!

## How to pre-register? Registration forms and templates
(Open Science Framework)

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Open-Ended Registration:
no requirements.
write a summary
description of the project.

OSF-Standard Pre-Data Collection
Registration: 2 questions:
1. Data already collected?
2. have you already looked at data?

AsPredicted.org:

8 questions: hypothesis; dependent variables; conditions; data
analysis; outliers & exclusion criteria; sample size (power
analysis); type of study

OSF Preregistration:
25 subject areas that
need to be answered.

Registered Report:

Pre-registration is peer-reviewed via a journal and labelled with
"IPA" (in-principle acceptance). If the study is carried out
correctly, it is guaranteed to be published, regardless of the
results. (see also https://cos.io/rr).

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**Reference:** Logg, Jennifer & Dorison, Charles. (2021). Pre-registration: Weighing costs and benefits for researchers. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 167. 18-27. 10.1016/j.oohdp.2021.05.006.