This pilot is designed to promote rigorous, transparent, and credible research. The Registered Reports (RRs) publishing method enables those outcomes by restructuring incentives in scientific publishing, where researchers are rewarded for producing rigorous and transparent science. 

RRs support values of open science including:

1. Rigor. Scientific rigor is a value of open science because it supports high-quality and unbiased study design, analysis, and interpretation of results. By having researchers commit to a study design before data collection, and shifting peer review to occur before results are known, RRs reduce the pressure to produce novel or positive results. This shift in focus can prevent questionable research practices and bias, such as selective reporting or HARKing (Hypothesizing After the Results are Known) by researchers, or outcome bias by reviewers.
2. Transparency. Transparency of methodologies is a value of open science because by increasing accountability, it reduces biases in practices at every stage of publishing a scientific paper, including research design, analysis, reporting, reviewing, and selection for publication. In RRs, researchers must specify their hypothesis as well as the criteria that will determine whether those hypotheses are supported. Additionally, in their final reports, researchers must adhere to the study design specified in their RR – which must be published regardless of study findings along with any study artifacts such as code, peer reviews, or study protocols. As part of this pilot program, Meta will do its part by providing a User Guide for data requests, a data request form, a response to the data request form, and a codebook for shared data, which may be published alongside the RR as well.
3. Reproducibility. Reproducibility is a value of open science because it helps ensure the integrity of scientific research and increases confidence in results. The RR publishing model encourages reproducibility by shifting peer review to occur before data collection and focuses on the strength of the methods, while also having higher expectations on materials sharing including data and code.

COS prepared training materials and other resources to provide an introduction to Registered Reports. You can find the resources on the COS website or use this link.

As noted above, COS prepared training materials and other resources to provide an introduction to Registered Reports. You can find the resources on the COS website or use this link.

Meta has provided a User Guide that will describe in greater detail the data that can be made available as part of this pilot program, and how it will be possible to merge with other study data collected by pilot researchers.

You must first submit your Stage 1 RR to the Lifecycle Journal and receive in-principle acceptance before accessing the data. If the Stage 1 Registered Report is accepted, you will coordinate with Meta for data access and your Stage 1 Registered Report, peer reviews, and editorial decision will be made public as part of COS’s Lifecycle Journal, with Editor-approved exceptions or embargos for ethical or proprietary concerns. 

Yes. Researchers must submit evidence of approval by a university ethics committee or IRB with their Stage 1 Registered Report before in-principle acceptance is confirmed.

Researchers should avoid including information about their identities or hypotheses so that Meta remains blind to those considerations when evaluating data availability requests. As a result, the evaluation of Data Request Forms will be focused on whether the data is feasible to make available as part of this pilot program.

Meta aims to provide a list of data in the User Guide that covers a wide range of features and experiences on Instagram that would have research utility, balanced against the privacy of research participants and other users on our platform, as well as feasibility. The list of data provided in the User Guide aims to be sufficiently comprehensive to conduct research on the topics listed in the Request for Proposals (RFP). Researchers may request additional data in their Data Request Forms that they believe are more valuable for their research. Access the User Guide here.

The pilot program was designed to promote the values of open science (i.e. transparency, reproducibility, and rigor). Making research artifacts openly available is in line with these values and thus is encouraged or required (where applicable) throughout the pilot program.

Below is a summary of the reporting expectations for Stage 1 and 2 RRs detailing which materials can (or must) be open at each step of the process.

Stage 1 Registered Report Reporting Expectations

Stage 2 Registered Report Reporting Expectations

Details on the Lifecycle Journal can be found here.

All Lifecycle Journal publications will be openly licensed (CC-BY) allowing the content to be reused elsewhere. Authors will have the option to assign a Version of Record (VOR) declaring the work completed and published in Lifecycle Journals; if they do not assign a VOR, they will have the option to submit the completed work elsewhere.

An objective of the Lifecycle Journal is to introduce innovations that will transform the vision and value of journals into effective facilitators of knowledge production and self-correction. One of these innovations is incorporating several human, machine, and empirical evaluations in a dynamic marketplace of credibility assessments.

For example, a service like FAIRsharing might provide authors with feedback about the quality of the documentation of shared data and materials that can be used to improve their usability. The full array of evaluation services will diversify assessment and increase engagement with the quality of the scholarly work submitted through the Lifecycle Journal project. 

These evaluations are intended to deepen scholarly engagement with the research produced in this pilot program and will not affect decision-making by the editorial board.

No. Participation in the Lifecycle Journal experimental evaluation services is an expectation for participation in the pilot program as a whole. 

At this time, we can only accept and provide materials in English.

If your preproposal submission is found ineligible, COS will contact you within 5 business days of your original submission until the submission deadline on September 5th. If COS communicates that your proposal is found ineligible due to a “fixable” error (e.g. missing email address, forgotten question, formatting, etc.), you will have the opportunity to submit a new response to the preproposal form with corrected information until the September 5th deadline.