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Preregistration freezes a version of your study and records your hypotheses and design on the OSF before data collection — so the analysis you planned is distinguishable from what you found later.

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What happens when you preregister

  1. Your working Draft is frozen into an immutable preregistered version (numbered, citable).
  2. That version is pushed to the OSF with your hypotheses, design, and materials, producing a timestamped registration + link.
  3. The study becomes runnable — you can open recruitment.

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Before you preregister

Run through the preflight checklist on the study:
  • All required blocks configured and validated.
  • Conditions/variants behave as intended (check in Preview).
  • If the study uses AI, note the non-determinism disclosure that’s added automatically.

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Preregister vs publish

  • Preregister — the open-science path: freezes and timestamps on OSF.
  • Publish — freezes a runnable version without an OSF push (good for pilots/exploratory work).
Both make the study runnable; only preregistration creates the public, timestamped plan.

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Amendments

Need to change a registered plan? Push a labelled amendment (see OSF) rather than quietly editing — the lineage stays honest.