Thursday, June 23, 2022

Earliest proposal for a new registered report format?

Earliest proposal for a new registered report format?

Back in March of 2012, about a year before we launched registered replication reports at Perspectives on Psychological Science and Chris Chambers and crew launched registered reports at Cortex, Alex Holcombe and I had been discussing ways to increase the incentives for replication studies. The discussion happened on the now-defunct Google+ platform. Those discussions led to plans for a new journal which soon after morphed into the registered replication reports at Perspectives.

Yesterday, Alex uncovered what I think is my first public post about the idea, dated 14 March 2012. I've copied it in full below, editing only to remove now broken Google+ tags/links. 

The post describes the value of what are now called "registered reports," detailing what form such articles would take, how they would be reviewed, and how the new format would improve the publishing process and incentives (at least for replication studies). Although the post was specifically focused on replication studies, most of the elements described in the post are now a standard part of the registered report model today.

If you know of earlier proposals for adoption of registered reports as an article type, let me know. It would be nice to know the full history of this format.