Evaluating Registered Reports: A Naturalistic Comparative Study of Article Impact

Abstract

Registered Reports (RRs) is a publishing model in which initial peer review is conducted prior to knowing the outcomes of the research. In-principle acceptance of papers at this review stage combats publication bias, and provides a clear distinction between confirmatory and exploratory research. Some editors raise a practical concern about adopting RRs. By reducing publication bias, RRs may produce more negative or mixed results and, if such results are not valued by the research community, receive less citations as a consequence. If so, by adopting RRs, a journal’s impact factor may decline. Despite known flaws with impact factor, it is still used as a heuristic for judging journal prestige and quality. Whatever the merits of considering impact factor as a decision-rule for adopting RRs, it is worthwhile to know whether RRs are cited less than other articles. We will conduct a naturalistic comparison of citation and altmetric impact between published RRs and comparable empirical articles from the same journals.