Increasing the transparency of systematic reviews: presenting a generalized registration form

Olmo R van den Akker; Gjalt-Jorn Ygram Peters; Caitlin J Bakker; Rickard Carlsson; Nicholas A Coles; Katherine S Corker; Gilad Feldman; David Moreau; Thomas Nordström; Jade S Pickering; Amy Riegelman; Marta K Topor; Nieky van Veggel; Siu Kit Yeung; Mark Call; David T Mellor; Nicole Pfeiffer

doi:10.1186/s13643-023-02281-7

Increasing the transparency of systematic reviews: presenting a generalized registration form

Syst Rev. 2023 Sep 22;12(1):170. doi: 10.1186/s13643-023-02281-7.

Authors

Olmo R van den Akker^#¹, Gjalt-Jorn Ygram Peters^#², Caitlin J Bakker³, Rickard Carlsson⁴, Nicholas A Coles⁵, Katherine S Corker⁶, Gilad Feldman⁷, David Moreau⁸, Thomas Nordström⁴, Jade S Pickering⁹, Amy Riegelman¹⁰, Marta K Topor¹¹, Nieky van Veggel¹², Siu Kit Yeung⁷, Mark Call¹³, David T Mellor¹³, Nicole Pfeiffer¹³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Methodology & Statistics, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands. ovdakker@gmail.com.
² Department of Theory Methodology & Statistics, Open University, Heerlen, The Netherlands. gjalt-jorn.peters@ou.nl.
³ Discovery Technologies Unit, University of Regina, Regina, Canada.
⁴ Department of Psychology, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.
⁵ Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Stanford, USA.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
⁸ School of Psychology and Center for Brain Research, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
⁹ Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK.
¹⁰ Social Sciences Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.
¹¹ School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK.
¹² School of Animal and Human Sciences, Writtle University College, Chelmsford, UK.
¹³ Center for Open Science, Charlottesville, USA.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

This paper presents a generalized registration form for systematic reviews that can be used when currently available forms are not adequate. The form is designed to be applicable across disciplines (i.e., psychology, economics, law, physics, or any other field) and across review types (i.e., scoping review, review of qualitative studies, meta-analysis, or any other type of review). That means that the reviewed records may include research reports as well as archive documents, case law, books, poems, etc. Items were selected and formulated to optimize broad applicability instead of specificity, forgoing some benefits afforded by a tighter focus. This PRISMA 2020 compliant form is a fallback for more specialized forms and can be used if no specialized form or registration platform is available. When accessing this form on the Open Science Framework website, users will therefore first be guided to specialized forms when they exist. In addition to this use case, the form can also serve as a starting point for creating registration forms that cater to specific fields or review types.

Keywords: Preregistration; Registration; Systematic review; Transparency.

Publication types

Letter
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Forms as Topic*
Systematic Reviews as Topic*