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Practical tips

General practical tips

As we come to the end of this tutorial, you should feel more knowledgeable and confident about preregistration and how to carry out one in your own research. Even if you are not quite ready to implement a study preregistration just yet, you should have the tools to critically evaluate your own research planning approaches and existing preregistered studies. Below are four practical tips and additional resources to help you on your next steps on your preregistration journey!

Tip 1: Find an appropriate template

A good way to get started with a preregistration is to find a template that aligns well with your research area and standards in your discipline. You can refer back to components of a preregistration page where examples of preregistration templates are listed.

Tip 2: Evaluate existing preregistrations

Spending time reading and evaluating existing preregistrations can get you thinking critically about what is included in one, level of detail, etc. Reviewing other researcher’s preregistered studies can act as a blueprint for when you come to write yours.

You can find an example of a preregistered study in your own research area on the Open Science Framework’s Zotero library. You can filter for subject matter and study type.

Tip 3: Embrace change and mistakes

As researchers we are not perfect and our studies can change when we are presented with new information (Bishop 2018). Your first preregistration is likely to have mistakes or information left out. That is ok! Think about how you can take the process of writing a preregistration as a learning opportunity and build your knowledge and make improvements for the next one.

Tip 4: Add more Open Science practices to your research workflows

Preregistration is one of many Open Science practices! In addition to preregistrering your study, you can make your research even more transparent and reproducible with open data (anonymized as appropriate), open code. You can read more about how to integrate Open Science practices in your workflows in the OSC’s Research Cycle Handbook.

Additional resources

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References

Bishop, D. V. M. 2018. “Fallibility in Science: Responding to Errors in the Work of Oneself and Others.” Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science 1 (3): 432–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918776632.
Gya, Ragnhild, Kristine Birkeli, Ingrid J. Dahle, et al. 2023. “Registered Reports: A New Chapter at Ecology & Evolution.” Ecology and Evolution 13 (4): e10023. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10023.