Thread by @EmmaHendersonRR

Doing a #PhD or #Postdoc & want to write #RegisteredReports in a short timeframe?

[🧵THREAD ⬇️based on my personal (positive) experience]

tldr; start writing, learn as you go. 1/n

But first, what are Registered Reports (RRs)? RRs are a publication format used by over 250 journals that prevent various forms of biased inference and reporting. To do that, RRs split the paper into two stages: 2/n

1⃣A stage 1 RR consists of the introduction, method and analysis plan. These elements are peer reviewed and the journal grants in-principle acceptance based on the importance of the research question & the robustness of the methods. 3/n

2⃣The journal guarantees publication of the full paper, regardless of the results, as long as stage 1 plans are followed. The experiment is conducted & the stage 2 RR is submitted, now w the results & discussion sections. Clearly labelled exploratory analyses are welcome. 4/n

The best advice given to me by @chrisdc77 was START EARLY. You don’t have to know everything when you start. Writing a stage 1 RR helps you structure your learning. 5/n

The key here is that you learn, plan, write, receive peer reviews, learn more and revise your manuscript BEFORE you collect your data. It’s actually a much less scary process than the standard publication format. 6/n

If you can’t collect data now use the time to write your stage 1 RR. Front load the research process, plan your analysis and be ready to hit the ground running when you can collect data. 7/n

RRs aren’t just for experiments. They are perfect for meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Some journals accept analyses of existing datasets. 8/n #sysrev

If you want to include >1 RR in your PhD, plan multiple semi-independent studies that don’t rely on the results of a previous study e.g. RR1 experiment, RR2 meta-analysis or systematic review. 9/n

OR if later experiments are contingent upon the outcomes of the earlier ones you can use incremental registration where you add experiments iteratively. 10/n

Added bonus: There are lots of cool and underrated side effects to writing a RR such as adding an in-principle acceptance to your CV, and reducing results anxiety – whether p < .05 or not doesn’t matter. 11/n

Find a list of all the journals that offer Registered Reports here: cos.io/initiatives/re… 12/n

Here’s a video from @riotscienceclub where I talk even more about RRs 13/n

I’m writing my PhD using RRs and happy to help if you have questions. Good luck writing yours! END