Most of the incentives in publishing reward a clean, positive story. That pressure produces familiar problems: results dredged from noise, hypotheses quietly rewritten after the fact, and a literature skewed toward findings that "worked." Two reforms tackle this at the root — one changes when review happens, the other changes what readers get to see.

Registered Reports: review the plan, not just the result

A Registered Report splits peer review into two stages. At Stage 1, reviewers assess the question, the methods, and the analysis plan before any data are collected. If the design is sound, the authors receive in-principle acceptance: a commitment to publish the finished study regardless of how the results turn out, provided they follow the registered plan. At Stage 2, reviewers check the completed work. The decision rewards good design, not a flattering outcome.

The effect on the literature can be striking. In psychology, one widely cited analysis (Scheel and colleagues, 2021) found around 96% positive results in the standard literature, compared with about 44% in Registered Reports — a gap attributed to reduced publication bias. That exact comparison is specific to psychology, and the format suits confirmatory work better than purely exploratory or qualitative studies. But the principle travels: when you judge the design before the result, you stop rewarding luck and selective reporting. The format, promoted by the Center for Open Science, is now offered by more than 300 journals.

Three things people conflate

  • Preregistration — posting a time-stamped study plan publicly before data collection. No peer review, no publication guarantee.
  • Registered Reports — peer review of that plan, plus in-principle acceptance.
  • Open or transparent peer review — about disclosing the review process, and applicable to any article.

Transparent peer review: showing the work

Transparent peer review publishes the referee reports and author responses alongside the final article, so readers can see the scrutiny a paper survived. Reviewer identities usually stay anonymous unless a reviewer chooses to sign. The direction of travel is clear: Nature made transparent peer review standard for new research submissions in June 2025, and several journals have offered it for years. Keeping signing optional matters — it protects early-career reviewers who might otherwise feel unable to be candid.

Why we care

Both reforms express the same conviction that guides Xpertia: trust should be earned through how we work, not asserted through prestige. Publishing the design before the data, and the review behind the decision, turns peer review from a closed verdict into something readers can actually inspect. We are committed to moving in this direction — because "trust us" is weaker than "see for yourself."