Registered reports and paediatric research
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Registered reports and paediatric research John Eric Chaplin1 · Holger Muehlan2 · Rob Arbuckle3 · on behalf of ISOQOL Child Health-Special Interest Group Accepted: 9 November 2020 / Published online: 17 November 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
The Child Health Special Interest Group (CH-SIG) would like to see an increase in the publication of good quality paediatric research, and we anticipate that registered reports (RR) will contribute to this. We therefore applaud the initiative of the Quality of Life Research journal. On 12th November 2012, Professor Chris Chambers, one of the co-founders of registered reports, tweeted: “Imagine a sci[entific] article where editorial decision is based on rationale, meth[od] & analysis plan BEFORE data is even collected” (bit.ly/2RfOEby). Eight years later, according to the Centre for Open Science https://www.cos.io/initiative s/registered-reports, there are now 272 journals that offer or are planning to offer RR as an option to authors, and the number of journals is increasing. However, only a few paediatric journals have so far joined the movement. Of the 272 journals, five publish paediatric research exclusively. Many others publish both paediatric and adult research; one of these is Quality of Life Research. The aim of RR is to be a tool to address the challenge of publication bias which leads to a focus on surprising or ‘statistically significant’ results and ignores the quality of the research. However, is this a problem in paediatric research? For the CH-SIG, the problem of publication bias, which has been noted for many years, has concerned the disproportionally fewer paediatric studies than adult research studies being presented both at ISOQOL and for publication. The CH-SIG has been offering the opportunity to pre-review abstracts to ISOQOL in order to seek to improve the chances of acceptance. The question of research quality has not been identified as an issue for the SIG. In fact, there is mixed
* John Eric Chaplin [email protected] 1
Institute for Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden
2
Department of Health and Prevention, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
3
Adelphi Values, Edinburgh, UK
evidence linking non-publication of paediatric research to the study’s methodological quality [1]. The CH-SIG would want to underscore the essential role of research as an agent of change to promote the health and well-being of children and, in order for this to happen, treatment decisions have to be based on evidence. It is important, therefore, that studies that can contribute to this evidence are published. As the scientific community increasingly turns to meta-analyses for evidence in healthcare, it is vitally important that studies are published so that they can be included within these meta-analyses. This includes negative results, studies on current approaches (as opposed to innovative approaches) and studies with small sample sizes. In addition, the CH-SIG woul
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