The ultimate open science practice – a registered report? Barriers for and learnings from my PhD project

Open Research objectives/practices

• Making the outputs of research freely available
• Increasing the transparency of research processes and methodologies
• Using alternative models of publication and peer review

Introduction

As a PhD student, I aim to conduct high-quality research that is reliable and accurate. In one of my first PhD studies, I implemented several open science practices to ensure transparency and reproducibility. These included a detailed pre-registration, sharing my full data set and analysis code, and making my study materials openly available on the platform Zenodo.

Initially, my goal had been to publish this study as a registered report — which I see as one of the strongest ways to ensure transparent and rigorous science. I discussed this with my supervisors, who supported the idea. I started by writing the introduction, hypotheses, methods, and a data analysis plan. This took considerable time as an early researcher, especially since I also needed to take the specific guidelines for registered reports of the journal I had chosen. After several rounds of feedback and revisions, I was ready to turn in my manuscript. From my EU project, I also had time pressure to collect the data. Thus, I could not wait for the lengthy reviewing process of the registered report.

Therefore, I used all the materials and preparation I had developed to create a very detailed pre-registration instead to ensure an open and transparent study nonetheless.

Motivation

My main motivation for the registered report was to ensure high research quality and transparency. I am very aware of how the publication can distort our perceptions of whether effects exist and how strong they are. Open science practices, such as registered reports, pre-registration, and data sharing, help to counteract these biases to different extents and make research findings more trustworthy.

Since I could not complete the study as a registered report, I wanted ensure that as much other open science principles as possible were still applied. I pre-registered my hypotheses, methods, and analysis plan, using the work I had already done for the registered report. After the data collection and analysis, I also created a Zenodo project, where I uploaded the questionnaire I used, the data set, clear explanations of variables, a link to the pre-registration, and my R code for the analyses.

Though I could not integrate any peer reviewer’s feedback on the study, this process still ensures transparency and enables other researchers to use my data as well. It also feels fairer to the participants who took the time to complete my questionnaire.

This experience taught me a lot about both the opportunities and challenges of open science. I learned that registered reports are excellent, but lengthy in their preparation. They require a long timeline, which is difficult within a PhD timeline or when projects depend on each other. For a registered report to work, I would need enough time between designing the study and the data collection, and ideally no strict deadlines or other projects depending on the study.

Even though I had to let go of the registered report format, I learned that there are many other valuable ways to ensure openness and transparency. Creating a comprehensive pre-registration and openly sharing materials, data, and code can already achieve many of the same goals. Moving forward, I plan to attempt another registered report when timelines allow, and to continue using pre-registration and data sharing as standard practice for future studies where possible.

URLs, references and further information

• Pre-registration: Pacheco, I. M., van der Werff, E., & Steg, L. (2024, December 11). Circular citizenship behaviours to promote systemic

  change: Influences of values, beliefs, and norms. Retrieved from https://osf.io/umh46/overview

• Manuscript: Pacheco, I. M., Van Der Werff, E., & Steg, L. (2026). Circular citizenship behaviours to promote systemic change: Influences of values, beliefs, norms, and personal agency. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 110, 102890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102890

• Zenodo project: Pacheco, I. M., van der Werff, E., Steg, L.& van Valkengoed, A. (2025). Values, beliefs, norms, and circular citizenship behaviours in a Dutch representative sample [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15853669