prereg: R Markdown Templates for Preregistrations of Scientific Studies

prereg provides R Markdown templates that facilitates authoring preregistrations of scientific studies in PDF format. The templates are based on the Center for Open Science Preregistration Challenge, the AsPredicted.org questions, a template suggested for social psychology by van ’t Veer and Giner-Sorolla (2016), and the replication recipe suggested by Brandt et al. (2013).

If you experience any problems or have suggestions for improvements, please open an issue.

Setup

Requirements

To use R Markdown and prereg you need the following software on your computer:

• R (2.11.1 or later)
• RStudio (0.99.441 or later) is optional; if you don’t use RStudio, you need to install pandoc using the instructions for your operating system
• A TeX distribution (2013 or later; e.g., MikTeX for Windows, MacTeX for Mac, obviously, or TeX Live for Linux)
• If you are running Windows, use MikTex if possible. Currently, pandoc and the Windows version of Tex Live don’t seem to like each other. Make sure you install the complete—not the basic—version.

Install prereg

You can install the stable version of prereg from CRAN

install.packages("prereg")

or the development version from this GitHub repository (you may have to install the devtools package first).

install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("crsh/prereg")

Create a preregistration document

Once you have installed the prereg you can select the templates when creating a new R Markdown file through the RStudio menus.

Example

prereg produces a clean form-like document.

The template file contains comments that provide further details on how to fill in the form but are invisible in the final PDF document.

Using prereg without RStudio

If you want to use prereg without RStudio you can use the rmarkdown::render function to create preregistration documents:

# Create new COS preregistration challenge R Markdown file
rmarkdown::draft(
  "my_preregistration.Rmd"
  , "cos_prereg"
  , package = "prereg"
  , create_dir = FALSE
  , edit = FALSE
)

# Render document
rmarkdown::render("my_preregistration.Rmd")

Acknowledgements

The templates for the preregistrations were developed by the Center for Open Science, AsPredicted.org, and Anna Elisabeth van ’t Veer and Roger Giner-Sorolla, respectively. I’m thankful for their permission to use their material in this package.

Package dependencies

References

Brandt, M. J., IJzerman, H., Dijksterhuis, A., Farach, F. J., Geller, J., Giner-Sorolla, R., … van ’t Veer, A. (2014). The Replication Recipe: What makes for a convincing replication? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 217–224. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2013.10.005

van ’t Veer, A. E., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2016). Pre-registration in social psychology—A discussion and suggested template. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 67, 2–12. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2016.03.004