Registered Reports
Empowering empirical research with a robust, reproducible publication platform that celebrates methodological rigor and delivers unparalleled author benefits.
Registered Reports are an article type that reforms the traditional publication process by allowing authors to pre-register their experiments. This means the review and publication process is split up in two stages.
Initially, you submit a stage I manuscript, comprising an introduction, hypothesis, methods, proposed analyses, and any applicable research ethics statement, before conducting the experiments. Your manuscript undergoes assessment and review by experts, who provide valuable insights to strengthen the experimental design, ultimately increasing the likelihood of obtaining reliable and reproducible results. Upon acceptance, the manuscript is published as a stage I article on ScienceDirect.
The publication of a stage I article comes with an “in principle acceptance (IPA)” for the stage II manuscript. This guarantee ensures publication alongside the stage I article, provided that you have followed the approved protocol (or sufficiently explained any deviations to the handling editor beforehand) and that the conclusions align with the underlying data, even if the hypothesis is not confirmed.
Why publish your Registered Reports article with Elsevier?
The two-stage publication approach of Registered Reports offers early feedback, reduces publication bias against negative results and improves transparency and reproducibility in research.
When publishing your Registered Reports article with an Elsevier journal, you can expect…
Top quality
Build robust research through rigorous review
You receive early feedback on your research plan from our expert editors and reviewers before conducting experiments, allowing you to fine-tune your proposed methods and analyses, and saving you time and effort on questionable studies.
Our rigorous peer review of study design and methodology ensures you build your research on a strong foundation and publish the best work possible, which paves the way for funding opportunities, career advancement and collaboration invitations.
Publication assurance
Publish your Registered Reports with confidence
You stake an early claim on your research hypothesis and benefit from the provisional guarantee that your work will be published regardless of the final outcomes, when your stage I article is accepted.
You are encouraged to report unexpected findings and tackle your research questions without the fear of non-significant results hindering publication.
High visibility
Reach the audience your research deserves
Your accepted articles from the two stages will be published alongside each other on the world’s largest platform, ScienceDirect opens in new tab/window, which attracts millions of researchers every month.
When publishing open access, your articles will be indexed and shared as widely as possible – our gold OA journals feature in databases like Scopus, DOAJ, Web of Science and PubMed Central.
Submitting a Registered Reports manuscript
To enable Registered Reports submissions, we have added two new article types to our submission and peer-review platform, Editorial Manager (EM): Registered Reports stage I and Registered Reports stage II. Accepted articles from the two stages will be published and linked on ScienceDirect.
Stage I
The stage I manuscript is reviewed, depending on the journal’s policy, by one or two external reviewers and the handling editor, who will evaluate the manuscript on several aspects such as the rationale, the proposed hypotheses, soundness and feasibility of the methodology and analyses, and reproducibility. Once the stage I article has been reviewed and accepted, it is published on ScienceDirect.
Stage II
An accepted and published stage I article automatically entails a provisional acceptance of the stage II manuscript (an “in principle acceptance” or IPA) before the outcomes are known, independently of the results, i.e., including negative, non-conclusive, positive or unexpected findings. These results are published as a stage II article. The manuscript may then be returned to the reviewers, who will examine whether the introduction, rationale and stated hypotheses are the same as the approved stage I submission and will verify if the data fits the results and conclusions.
Although you may deviate from the proposed materials and methods, you need to consult the handling editor before doing so to avoid any unwelcome surprises for either party. It is pivotal that the alternative method still answers the same original question(s).
For detailed instructions on how to submit a Registered Reports manuscript, see our Registered Reports author guidelines.
Participating journals
The following Elsevier journals welcome the submission of Registered Reports*
Acta Psychologica
Addiction Neuroscience
AJPM Focus
Annals of Tourism Research
Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Bone
Brain and Cognition
Brain and Language
Brain Research
Brain Reseach Bulletin
Clinica Chimica Acta
Clinical Biochemistry
Consciousness and Cognition
Contemporary Educational Psychology
Current Research in Neurobiology
Current Research in Physiology
Developmental Biology
IBRO Neuroscience Reports
Infant Behavior and Development
International journal of Biological Macromolecules
International Journal of Psychophysiology
Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy
Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Journal of mass spectrometry and advances in the clinical laboratory
Journal of Neuroimmunology
Journal of Research in Personality
Journal of School Psychology
Neuroscience
NFS Journal
Personality and Individual Differences
Practical laboratory medicine
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry
Protein expression and purification
Tourism Management
Submit your Register Report by visiting the journal’s homepage on ScienceDirect opens in new tab/window.
* Please note that some journals within Elsevier maintain their own unique Registered Reports publication process. For journals that are not on this list, please see the journal's specific guidelines for more information.
User guidelines
Citing a Registered Reports article
Both the stage I and stage II article will receive a definite volume and issue / article number and are fully citable the moment they are published. If the stage II article is published, researchers can choose themselves whether the stage I or stage II article is the most relevant – or both – depending on the context of the reference.
Frequently asked questions
Last updated: October 15th, 2024Yes, journals using a double-anonymized peer review workflow can also opt for publishing Registered Reports. The stage I article is in that case reviewed double-anonymously, and the author names will only be visible to reviewers upon publication of the article. The stage II article is submitted with an “in principle acceptance (IPA)” guarantee, hence the most crucial part of the research is still double-anonymized, thereby minimizing reviewer bias.
Whether or not to submit a Registered Report to a double-anonymous journal is up to the author, who can weigh the benefits of increased reproducibility / replicability, transparency and chance to receive early feedback on the study design against the partial loss of anonymity of the peer review process.
Both the stage I and stage II article will receive a definite volume and issue / article number upon acceptance and are fully citable the moment they are published. If the stage II article is published, researchers can choose for themselves whether the stage I or stage II article is the most relevant – or both – to cite, depending on the context of the reference. It is not expected nor observed in other journals that have been publishing Registered Reports for some time that the Impact Factor is negatively affected by this.
No, it is not the same. A stage I article contains an introduction, hypothesis and proposed methods to investigate that hypothesis and also anticipates having a second article associated with it, which will show the results and conclusion of the research. A methods or protocol article is a standalone article that describes a certain method or protocol that can be applied to various research questions, and also doesn’t predict any results or other outcomes.
One of the benefits of publishing a Registered Report is to receive early feedback from knowledge peers on the research design, so that authors can optimize it before conducting the actual research. As the article type includes an “in principle acceptance (IPA)” (of results, discussion and conclusion independent of outcomes), it guards against instances in which scooping may lead to an inability to publish your work in a journal of your preference. Furthermore, by putting your research idea and methods in the peer reviewed literature, you stake your claim to the idea. Overall, the Registered Reports publishing model mitigates the effects of scooping rather than promoting it.
This is one of the benefits of publishing research as a Registered Report; pre-registering the planned research allows authors to publish negative or unexcepted findings that normally would not be published. A recent review in the field of psychology1 found that 96% of reported results in traditional article types were positive (i.e., hypothesis-confirming), compared to only 44% in Registered Reports, showing the article type’s effectiveness in allowing authors to present a full picture of their research. We highly encourage the publication of negative results, as it will help other researchers to finetune their studies by knowing what did not work, preventing waste of both time and resources. Our reviewer guidelines/editor guidelines explicitly state that manuscripts should not be rejected for not containing positive findings alone.
Authors are allowed to make some amendments to the study design during the experiment, as long as they can clearly explain to the journal editors why this was needed, and authors ask the handling editor for approval for these changes before preparing their stage II article. If approved, they should add a summary of the changes in their methods or design section of their stage II manuscript, so it is clear to readers what has, and why it changed. The two articles will be linked together online so readers can easily go back to the stage I article to read the original and detailed methods.
Yes, while this is not encouraged, it is possible to publish a stage II article in a different Elsevier journal. We will make sure to link the two articles online for ease of reference. Please note that we won’t be able to offer the APC discount for the stage II article in that case.
Yes, replication studies are well suited to be published as Registered Reports. Publishing a replication study as a Registered Reports article encourages direct replications regardless of effect size or statistical significance, fostering a culture of transparency and reproducibility in psychological research. By using the submission and review process for replication studies, this model promotes constructive peer review, cumulative estimation of effect sizes, and broader awareness of methodological subtleties, ultimately advancing the reliability and credibility of scientific findings in psychology.
Registered Reports may not be the most suitable article type for every kind of research. This may be especially true for research that is not empirical in nature or hypothesis-driven (e.g., some types of qualitative research and exploratory research).
This depends on the data policy of the journal that you are submitting to; for most Elsevier journals, making research data available is strongly encouraged but not mandated, for some it is. You will find this information in the guide for authors of the journal.
This option is not encouraged but possible – in that case, we ask authors to submit a summary of their study as a "terminated registration" to the journal that has published the stage I article. If the reason is that the proposed methods are not adequately suited to study the proposed question, authors are asked to include pilot data to demonstrate that the question is unanswerable with the currently available technology. This termination notice will be published alongside the published stage I article, which will remain online as any other published article.
FAQ references:
1 Scheel, A. M., Schijen, M. R. M. J., & Lakens, D. (II0III). An excess of positive results: Comparing the standard Psychology literature with Registered Reports. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 4(II), I–III. https://doi.org/I0.II77/II5I5II459IIII007467
Additional references: