Christopher D. Chambers

By rewarding speed, volume, and coherent positive narratives, traditional publishing incentivizes questionable scientific practices and analytic flexibility. The latter especially contributes to blurring the distinction between exploration and confirmation, which inflates the apparent strength of confirmatory claims. This systemic issue has gone unchecked for decades, leaving the scientific community with a body of scholarly literature that is unreliable and lacking validity. Registered Reports (RRs) address problematic publishing practices by requiring a priori registration of confirmatory tests, which is peer-reviewed before the research begins (stage 1). The editorial acceptance of a stage 1 plan establishes a commitment to publication regardless of research outcomes. Publication remains, nonetheless, contingent on a second peer review and editorial scrutiny (stage 2) to verify that the approved plan was followed, all deviations were transparently disclosed and justified, confirmatory and exploratory claims are clearly delineated, and the integrity of the design was maintained. Meta-scientific comparisons indicate that RRs reduce outcome-based publication bias and improve methodological rigor without compromising perceived novelty. By making accepted RR protocols and their review history citable research outputs, RRs also strengthen recognition for peer-review work. In this perspective, we argue that RRs should become the primary mode of confirmatory publication moving forward.

Past studies using transcranial magnetic stimulation have shown larger motor-evoked potentials when people observe someone lifting a heavy object than when they observe someone lifting a light one. This means that observers may engage their own motor system in proportion to the perceived effort. However, the different responses during the observation of light and heavy objects may have been influenced by predictable trial sequences within blocked presentation, making it unclear whether corticospinal excitability reflects online processing of kinematics or is affected by top-down expectations. In this Registered Report, 57 right-handed participants passively observed videos of a precision grip and lift of heavy and light objects while receiving a single-pulse TMS to the left primary motor cortex during the lift phase of the movement. Motor-evoked potentials were recorded from the right first dorsal interosseous muscle. The study compared two main observation contexts: a predictable trial sequence in which repeated videos of the same lifts were presented in a blocked order, and an unpredictable one in which videos were presented semi-randomly and participants could rely only on kinematic cues to perceive the weight of the lifted object. In both conditions, the same videos of lifts of equivalent-looking heavy and light objects were used and only the order of presentation differed. Contrary to our predictions, in the blocked (predictable) condition, there was no significant difference in MEPs elicited by light and heavy lifts. In the unpredictable condition, participants showed greater corticospinal excitability during the observation of the light lifts compared to the heavy lifts. This suggests that in the absence of predictable information, the corticospinal system was sensitive to the observed kinematics, but contrary to previous findings, its excitability varied inversely with the object weight.

Observing others’ actions and imagining oneself performing the same actions (motor imagery) have been linked in the literature in several ways. They have been shown to have overlapping neural representations, both seem to relate to one's ability to move, and both have been shown to positively affect movement rehabilitation. Whether these overlaps reflect a direct functional relationship between motor imagery and the ability to derive relevant information from observed kinematics (action understanding) has not yet been investigated. A previous study found that individuals with low self-reported motor imagery vividness exhibit weaker motor system engagement during action observation than those with typical imagery vividness. The present study provides the first behavioural test of the relationships between motor and general visual imagery vividness and a quantifiable behavioural measure of action understanding - specifically, the ability to judge the weight of objects based on observing someone else lift them. To test the research question across the full imagery spectrum, our recruitment strategy included a high proportion of individuals with very low imagery vividness (often referred to as ‘aphantasia’). An online sample (N = 392) completed a weight judgement task alongside a matched speed judgement control task. Neither motor imagery vividness (Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire-2) nor general visual imagery vividness (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire) predicted action understanding, with a Bayesian analysis suggesting moderate to strong evidence against any relationship. Overall, our findings suggest that self-reported motor and general visual imagery vividness are functionally independent from action understanding of manual interactions.

The current scientific publishing landscape consists of a small number of for-profit publishers who rely on the free or underpaid labor of researchers, as well as researchers who endorse and perpetuate the system in the name of prestige. The purpose of this brief editorial is to introduce an alternative model, Peer Community in (PCI) Psychology. PCI Psychology is a journal-independent service that reviews and recommends preprints related to psychological research and scholarship. PCI Psychology is a community-focused platform with no costs to researchers, and emphasizes openness, transparency, and methodological rigor. The purpose of this brief paper is to provide an overview of PCI Psychology and how it works, document the history of the initiative, and address some questions or concerns that authors might have.

The vast majority of empirical research articles report a single primary analysis outcome that is the result of a single analysis plan, executed by a single analysis team (usually the team that also designed the experiment and collected the data). However, recent many-analyst projects have demonstrated that different analysis teams generally adopt a unique approach and that there exists considerable variability in the associated conclusions. There appears to be no single optimal statistical analysis plan, and different plausible plans need not lead to the same conclusion. A high variability in outcomes signals that the conclusions are relatively fragile and dependent on the specifics of the analysis plan. Crucially, without multiple teams analyzing the data, it is difficult to gauge the extent to which the conclusions are robust. We have recently proposed that empirical articles of particular scientific interest or societal importance are accompanied by two or three short reports that summarize the results of alternative analyses conducted by independent experts [F. Bartoš et al., Nat. Hum. Behav. (2025)]. In order to showcase the practical feasibility and epistemic benefits of this approach we have founded the Journal of Robustness Reports, which is dedicated to publishing short reanalyses of empirical findings. This editorial describes the scope and the workflow of the Journal of Robustness Reports including the type and format of the published articles. We hope that the Journal of Robustness Reports will help make reanalyses of published findings the norm across the empirical sciences.

The vast majority of empirical research articles feature a single primary analysis outcome that is the result of a single analysis plan, executed by a single analysis team. However, recent multi-analyst projects have demonstrated that different analysis teams usually adopt a unique approach and that there exists considerable variability in the associated conclusions. There appears to be no single optimal statistical analysis plan, and different plausible plans need not lead to the same conclusion. A high variability in outcomes signals that the conclusions are relatively fragile and dependent on the specifics of the analysis plan. Crucially, without multiple teams analyzing the data, it is difficult to gauge the extent to which the conclusions are robust. We propose that empirical articles of particular scientific interest or societal importance are accompanied by two or three short reports that summarize the results of alternative analyses conducted by independent experts. The present paper aims to facilitate the adoption of this approach by providing concrete guidance on how such Synchronous Robustness Reports could be seamlessly integrated within the present publication system.

Registered Reports (RRs) are an initiative that has been introduced to enhance methodological rigor and research transparency. To date, over 350 journals offer publication through RRs. The format has been slower to be adopted across medical and health journals though, with approximately 1% of journals indexed in MEDLINE offering RRs. The British Journal of General Practice (BJGP) is one such medical journal enabling the submission of RRs. However, uptake has been low.In this letter, we discuss the benefits of RRs for the medical research community, and the challenges and potential solutions to the implementation of this format.