Pre-registration

• All empirical projects will be pre-registered, preferably using the Open Science Framework.

  • Pilot studies need not be pre-registered, but should then be subject to a pre-registered replication or extension.

• Pre-registration should include as much detail as possible.

• Pre-registration must include at minimum:

• Sample size (with justification)

• Inclusion/exclusion criteria

• Criteria and procedures for outlier exclusion and data transformation

  • Even if you can’t say exactly how you will do it, outline your procedures for determining how to do it

• Primary hypotheses or outcomes to be tested (or an explicit statement that the study is simply exploratory)

• In some cases, multi-stage pre-registration may be appropriate

  • E.g. when an initial discovery sample is used to determine hypotheses for subsequent testing in a validation sample
  • In this case, the initial pre-registration should lay out the sampling plan and procedures for data splitting, as well as the plan for followup pre-registrations.

• For fMRI studies, pre-registration should specify:

  • Any anatomical regions of interest to be used (with a specific definition and/or image mask for the region)
  • Motion modeling strategies (including trial- or subject-level exclusion criteria)
  • Confound modeling strategies at the trial-, subject- and group-level (including the specific design of response time modeling strategies)

• Deviations from pre-registration

  • Pre-registration should not be viewed as handcuffs. If a detail of the pre-registration is clearly suboptimal, then the rationale for using a more appropriate method should be noted, and the optimal method should be used.
  • Publications should include an explicit “Deviations from pre-registration” section that outlines any deviations and their rationale.