[From the blog “Registered Reports: Piloting a Pre-Results Review Process at the Journal of Development Economics” by Andy Foster, Dean Karlan, and Ted Miguel posted at Development Impact]

“…the Journal of Development Economics (JDE) now offers authors the opportunity to have their prospective empirical projects reviewed and approved for publication before the results are known. This track for article submissions will be available as part of a pilot project, which will allow us to better understand the extent to which pre-results review can be applied at the JDE, and possibly in economics as a whole. …To our knowledge, this appears to be among the first attempts to introduce pre-results peer review in an economics journal. However, more than 90 academic journals in biology, medicine, political science, psychology, and other disciplines are already implementing pre-results review, with the subsequent published articles usually called ‘Registered Reports’ (RRs). We have tried to learn from their efforts in preparation for this pilot, and are coordinating our activities with the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) to help support authors and referees during this pilot phase.”

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