Registered Reports: A Method to Increase the Credibility of Published Results

What if scientific journals judged a study's worth before anyone peeked at the results? That's the big idea behind Registered Reports, introduced here in a landmark special issue of Social Psychology -- the first journal issue anywhere made up entirely of pre-registered replication studies. Researchers submitted their plans upfront, got peer-reviewed on methodology alone, locked in their designs publicly, and then collected data with publication guaranteed no matter what happened. This flips the usual incentive structure, where surprising or positive findings get published and boring-but-honest null results gather dust. The reform was partly sparked by controversies like Bem's famous precognition paper, which highlighted how flexible methods and publication bias can warp science. It's now a cornerstone of the credibility revolution reshaping psychology and beyond.