Preregistration and registered reports: What, why, and how
How do you ensure that your research is credible, to yourself and others? Preregistration means specifying in advance your hypotheses, methods, and/or analyses for a study, in a time-stamped file that others can access. Many fields, including behavioural and medical sciences, are increasingly using preregistration or Registered Reports (where a journal accepts your study at preregistration phase, and guarantees to publish the results if you follow the registered plan). If you’ve never preregistered a study before (or even if you have!) it can be complicated and hard to do well. In this workshop, we will go over the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘how’ of preregistration, and after some practice exercises, you will start drafting your own preregistration. We will also discuss some of the common challenges of preregistration, and its limitations.

After the course, you will be able to: describe what preregistration and Registered Reports are (and how they differ); explain the benefits (and drawbacks) of preregistration and Registered Reports; identify what types of research are most suited for preregistration and Registered Reports; recognise the common pitfalls in writing a preregistration; identify the logistics of preregistering: which format and platform to use; and demonstrate the ability to write an effective preregistration, with an appropriate balance of specificity and concision.

Intended audience: researcher and research student; staff
Date: 25 March 2026, 10:30
Venue: Online via Microsoft Teams
Speaker: Jackie Thompson (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
Organising department: Bodleian Research and Learning Support
Organiser: Helen Bond (Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Bodleian iSkills - Workshops in Information Discovery and Scholarly Communications
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ask/workshops#/course/OXFORDBODL/OPENS0011
Cost: Free
Audience: Members of the University of Oxford, Oxford University Hospitals and Bodleian reader card holders.
Editors: Helen Bond, Sarah Humphreys, Melanie Smith