Encouraging Registered Reports: Metascience and tool development

Meghreblian, Benjamin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1672-6415 2025. Encouraging Registered Reports: Metascience and tool development. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Multiple research communities face major replication and reproducibility crises, driven by institutional and cultural incentive structures that give rise to pervasive, questionable research practices and publication bias. Registered Reports (RRs) - an academic publication format in which study proposals are peer reviewed and pre-accepted before studies are conducted - are thought to be one key mechanism for combatting these phenomena. Though RRs uptake has accelerated rapidly in the last decade, adoption is limited and uneven across disciplines, with inconsistent implementation. RRs adoption may be strengthened through a greater understanding of (a) how RRs perform against key indicators of quality, efficiency, implementation, and user experience, and (b) barriers to RRs adoption, be they practical or attitudinal. Due to the relative infancy of the RRs format, investigations into these areas have been limited, typically restricted to snapshot audits or discipline-specific analyses, despite the need for investigations that allow for a broader examination of how RRs are functioning on an ongoing basis. These investigations may help inform strategies for increasing RRs uptake, thereby strengthening the format’s capacity to support more credible research. Taking a mixed-methods approach, this thesis combines tool development, cross-disciplinary survey research, and within-journal metadata analysis to examine RRs performance, user-experience, as well as the barriers to RRs adoption. The headline results illustrate an overriding community belief in the existence of publication bias, and some tolerance for it, with some variation by subgroups. Specific barriers to RRs adoption are identified, but mostly absent. Evidence also shows that, among RRs users, perceptions of RRs and their performance are broadly positive. Finally, internal journal data is presented showing that RRs are a more efficient publishing track compared to standard empirical articles. Discussion is focused on the implications of these findings for journals, funders, institutions and the scientific reform movement. Further directions for RRs-related metascientific research and tool development are also considered.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 April 2026
Last Modified:	28 Apr 2026 08:11
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186657

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