Preregistrar

Preregistrar is a person, organization, or system that creates or maintains preregistrations for research studies, clinical trials, or other projects. Preregistration is the act of recording study design, hypotheses, and analysis plans in a time-stamped registry before data collection begins, with the aim of increasing transparency and reducing bias.

In practice, preregistrations typically include the study’s objectives and hypotheses, the proposed methods, the population and sampling plan, variables and outcomes, data collection procedures, and a detailed statistical analysis plan. Some preregistrations also specify stopping rules, criteria for including or excluding data, and plans for handling exploratory analyses.

A preregistrar can be an individual researcher who preregisters a study on a platform such as the Open Science Framework or ClinicalTrials.gov, or an institutional or journal body that manages a registry or enforces preregistration requirements. Preregistrations are often associated with broader efforts to improve reproducibility and accountability in science, and they are sometimes linked to publication formats like registered reports.

Benefits of preregistration include reduced risk of p-hacking and HARKing, enhanced methodological clarity, and easier replication and meta-analysis. It also supports accountability and can improve the credibility of findings. Limitations include the potential for rigidity in fast-evolving research questions, the burden of documentation, and incomplete enforcement by some registries. Preregistration is more common in fields with established registries and in clinical research, but its use is expanding across disciplines.

See also: preregistration platforms, registered reports, ClinicalTrials.gov, Open Science Framework.