从这个星期开始Registered Reportswill be among the article formats offered by BMC Biology.

Registered Reports are not a new publication format:他们一直是一个选择in psychology and social science journals and for preclinical publications for some years. But it is only more recently that they have begun to be recognized as an attractive option for papers in basic biology.

他们是什么，什么吸引人？

First, what’s the question?

注册报告被提交为研究的引言和理由，并详细描述了拟议的方法论和统计分析，但没有数据。从广义上讲，裁判是否是一个好问题，而拟议的方法和统计检验是回答它的有效方法。

If the referees are satisfied on these two counts, the journal makes a commitment to publish the paper once the data are collected irrespective of the answer they deliver. So a negative result is as acceptable as a positive one.

This satisfies an increasing sense that it is as important, in the case of an inherently important question, to know when the answer is no as it is to know when it’s yes. But to date it has been less publishable.

Of course there are provisos.

The original methodology must have been followed, and the results must (according to the referees) provide a valid basis for the conclusions drawn from the study.

There are also provisos to the provisos…There may prove, once the investigation begins, to be good reasons for departing from the proposed methodology: provided that these are submitted to and approved by the journal, they are permitted.

Clearly, too, new questions may suggest themselves.

No more HARKing

坚持认为，注册报告遵循最初提出的问题的严格轨迹到一个简单的答案将是背叛生物学的本质，在这种情况下，仔细的实验​​倾向于提出新问题并导致意外答案。

With this in mind (and in the light of earlier experience with the format) Registered Reports allow the inclusion of exploratory investigations suggested by the study once it has begun.

但是这些临时调查必须宣布为这样。这也是一个严格的规则，即最初提交的简介在收集数据时不能在最终提交中更改。

Thus a Registered Report should represent the real path from the formulation of the hypothesis to the eventual conclusions. This is a major departure from common practice for publications in biology, as remarked by Buzz Baum ina recent guest blog.

Most papers no longer tell the story of the research: the introduction is written only after the results are in, and (it seems reasonable to venture) tailored to point in the direction of the conclusions the authors believe their data best uphold. (Hence the neologacronysm – as it were – HARKing – hypothesizing after the results are known)

与最近的对科学的信誉的关注, a format that enforces candor must be a good thing.

可重复性的幻影

The quest for reproducibility was an important motive for the development of registered reports. If the experimental design is capable of reliable support for the conclusions of a study, and the methodology is described in sufficient detail, then the study should be reproducible.

Well, yes and no. It has been argued eloquently elsewhere – most recently in a评论不满意结果的癌症天线转换开关ucibility project, and perhaps most engagingly byPeter Walter on making a clock– that there are too many unknown variables in most biological experiments to allow them to be repeated precisely.

但是，强制执行的透明度肯定会有所帮助，并且可能至少节省了一些论文，因为信息不足，因此癌症可重复性项目无法测试其有效性，而这些论文的信息不足，以及真正知道它是如何完成的博士后的消失。

Reducing waste

更重要的是，在收集数据之前对实验设计进行审查可能会使实验设计和统计独奏主义的错误在时间，努力和资源投入到无法提供令人满意的答案的研究中进行纠正。

When we initiated ourcurrent policy on standards of reporting, we asked ourEditorial Board to comment, and one of their most telling points was that by the time of submission of a paper it was far too late to query the methodology.

当然不是每个人

并非所有生物学研究都符合注册报告格式。大概最不会。但是，我们认为，有些人可以从该出版物选项中受益匪浅。而且，如果它鼓励更广泛地提出研究的开放性，那一定是好的。

We are offering Registered Reports in this belief and in a spirit of experiment: as with any experiment, we don’t know how exactly it will turn out.

Here’swhere you submitif you would like to help us find out.