A qualitative analysis of stakeholder experiences with Registered Reports Funding Partnerships

Abstract

Background: Registered Reports (RRs) could be a way to increase the quality of scientific research and literature, such as by reducing publication bias and increasing the rigour of study designs. These potential benefits have led to Registered Report funding partnerships (RRFPs or partnerships for short) between research funders and academic journals who collaborate to encourage researchers to publish RRs. In this study we investigated the research question: “What are the experiences of the stakeholders (authors, reviewers, journal editors, funders) in the various partnership models?”. Our companion paper addresses a related, but separate, research question. Methods: We conducted a thematic analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (funders, editors, authors, reviewers, matchmakers) from six partnerships. Results: Interviewees had highly variable perceptions and experiences, reflecting the complex and nuanced impacts of partnerships. We identified 6 themes: “Importance of communication with authors and reviewers”, “Influence on study design”, “Appropriateness of partners”, “Potential to reduce publication bias”, “Impact on reviewer workload”, and “Insufficient evidence”. Conclusions: This was the first investigation into these novel initiatives. We hope that our findings can benefit and shape current and future partnerships.

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“…The need for such support from wider social structures to facilitate Open Research has been previously discussed in meta research on preregistration (Osborne & Norris, 2022) and Registered Reports , and is supported by Early Career Researchers (Kowalczyk et al, 2022;Zečević et al, 2021) and Open Research networks such as the UKRN (Stewart et al, 2022). Whilst there has been promising progress to incentivise, recognise and reward Open Research practices, including within journals (e.g., via badges; Kidwell et al, 2016) and across them (e.g., via TOP factor assessment; Nosek et al, 2016), by funders (e.g., Registered Reports funding partnerships; (Clark et al, 2021;Drax et al, 2021), and some institutions (e.g., European Universities Research practices) were seen by academics as support that would most help them to use more Open Research practices. This questionnaire can be used to collect longitudinal data to examine the trajectory of Open Research, and inform strategy to develop Open Research practices.…”

Lessons learnt for enhancing hospital resilience to pandemics: A qualitative analysis from Italy

“…Exploratory analyses are commonly used to generate hypotheses for further studies or to build theoretical models derived from the data [ 84 ]. Previous qualitative studies which combine semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis proved to be efficient in identifying stakeholder views on little known research areas [ 85 , 86 ]. This section provides details on participants recruitment, data collection and analysis.…”

Systemic problems require systemic solutions: the need for coordination and cooperation to improve research quality

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