Preregistration is a key open science practice that helps researchers plan studies in advance by specifying hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans before collecting or analyzing data. By making these decisions explicit upfront, preregistration encourages transparency, can reduce bias, and helps researchers—and the wider community—understand how and why a study was conducted.
Along with Em Paul (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, MPI CBS), Gisela Govaart (MPI CBS and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin) and Antonio Schettino (Erasmus University Rotterdam and Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education) co-led the 2021 paper “Making ERP Research More Transparent: Guidelines for Preregistration”, published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Event-related potential (ERP) studies analyze brain activity recorded via electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the brain’s electrical response to specific events. The paper outlined why ERP studies benefit from preregistration and offered practical guidance for documenting complex preprocessing and analysis steps.
Concurrently, a community‑driven effort produced the detailed EEG and ERP Methods template. Now available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) as part of a growing collection of preregistration resources, the template guides researchers through every stage of ERP study planning. Developed through collaborative hackathons and contributions from colleagues from around the globe, the template encourages transparency, rigor, and thoughtful planning at every step of the research process.
In this Q&A, Govaart and Schettino reflect on the motivation behind the template, how it promotes transparency and rigor, and how it can help researchers at all career stages plan studies more carefully and move toward a culture of “fewer studies, but better” in ERP research and beyond.
Q: To start, could you broadly explain what an ERP study is?
AS: I should preface this by saying that I’m no longer in a research role, but I’ve done a lot of research in psychology and neuroscience. One of the techniques that can be used in those studies is electrophysiology. Basically, you put electrodes on people’s heads and record brain activity while you ask them to do something, or even when you ask them to do nothing. But most often it’s when you ask them to do something, which can be watching a video, looking at images, or listening to specific sounds or words. You record brain activity, and this electrical brain activity can be analyzed in many different ways. The classic way of analyzing it is by doing what is called event-related potentials.
To do this, you do some form of preprocessing on this continuous electrical data, because the goal is to try to understand what happens in the brain when a specific event occurs. With event-related potentials, you cut these continuous signals and preprocess them in such a way that you can look at what happens in the brain soon after the onset of an event, which is your stimulus. That’s why they’re called event-related potentials. They’re electrical potentials that come from the brain that are related to a specific event that you choose.
GG: You basically average the brain signal in response to all the different stimuli that you give, or all the ones that are the same, and then you get an averaged signal for this stimulus type, which we call an event-related potential.
Q: How did the EEG and ERP Methods template originate?
GG: It began at a SIPS [Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science] meeting in 2019. A neuroimaging preregistration hackathon was organized by Johannes Algermissen, David Mehler, Stephan Heunis and Remi Gau, which Em and Antonio attended. They actually started a preregistration template for EEG in general, and one for fMRI, and opened a Slack channel. Then, with a group at the Max Planck Institute including Em and me, we decided to organize a series of hackathons to keep working on the template.
AS: I joined in 2019 when I met Em at the SIPS hackathon. We kept in touch, and later, I was invited to write a paper related to open science and electrophysiology. I thought of inviting Em, then I asked if there was anyone else that they wanted to invite. Then Gisela came on. That’s how the three of us started working together.
There were two things happening in parallel: continuing the preregistration template, which was done mostly by Gisela and Em at the Max Planck Institute, and the paper we published on preregistration for electrophysiology. These ran in parallel until the publication was completed. We continued the preregistration template because we really wanted it to be one of the templates on the Open Science Framework (OSF). I’ve been a huge fan of the Center for Open Science since its inception, so it’s one of the best things in my professional life that I can have something I’ve authored directly as part of the platform.
GG: It was during writing this article on preregistration in EEG research that we all realized more and more that the article is a good starter, but it needs an accompanying preregistration template. Then you can just have it there and answer the questions in it; you don’t have to take everything from the article. It’s also more detailed than what we could include in the article itself.
Another reason was that the template is especially tailored for early career researchers. At the Max Planck Institute, we were a group of early career researchers in the open science initiative. For researchers at all career stages, it’s good to have such a detailed template—but especially if it’s your first or second EEG study. Otherwise, it’s very difficult to think about all the possible things that you might want to report in the preregistration.
AS: Or even doing your study. The way I was brought up was that you do something and then realize the mistakes you made, and then you do better the next time. But if someone had told me, “You should have thought about this. Why don’t you think about this before you start your actual study?” then I think I would’ve done a better job as a researcher. That’s the point: helping others do better research and making it smoother, so they don’t have to spend 80 hours a week working; they can do other things.
Q: How does this template help researchers plan and document their choices? What benefits does it offer for early career researchers or others using the template?
GG: We try to be very detailed in all the questions asked in the template, so that people are encouraged to think about things they might not even know the answer to yet. Because the question is there, they’re encouraged—or in a way, forced—to write down “not decided yet” or “we might do either option A or option B,” which helps a lot for transparency.
AS: There are two schools of thought I’ve heard over the years—it's a continuum with two extremes. One is that a preregistration template should set a low bar and be as easy as possible so that more people use it. At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the idea that everything should be clearly specified because then researchers know what’s important to write down in order to produce better research. Over time, for me, the latter has become much more important. I don't do it just to tick a box. I do it because the reason behind it is to have better research. It doesn't help me to have three questions that I can answer very vaguely, instead of carefully thinking. I know that I’m a better researcher afterward, and my research will be better. That's the goal behind the template.
GG: Ten years ago, these discussions were very relevant. It probably still made sense to say, “Let's have a small preregistration template to encourage people to just start with it,” because it was still something that many people didn't know about or trust. I think a lot of people were against, or scared of, preregistration. So at that moment in time, there were many good arguments to have a very broad, very short preregistration template.
But now, I think preregistration is established enough that it makes more sense to go for something more thorough. For me right now, it doesn’t make sense to have a very broad preregistration. If I see a study that’s preregistered, I would hope—and I would check—that the preregistration behind it is more thorough than three big questions.
AS: Back to your question, a registration helps with transparency and verifiability. In our paper, we’re not super sure that it helps with reproducibility in itself. On its own, one can write a preregistration and completely ignore it, and then it doesn't help. Or they might not write a preregistration, but the paper is accompanied by open data and open code that makes it more reproducible anyway. So the registration helps you think. Maybe that’s the most important point. It helps you think: why am I doing the things I’m doing? Is it because other people told me to? Is it because everybody in the field does it, or because it actually makes sense? That comes with the idea of transparency. It's educational, and it’s also fair.
Q: Looking ahead, what impact do you hope this template will have on the design, reporting, and credibility of EEG and ERP studies?
GG: There are so many decisions involved in research in general, but especially in EEG or ERP research. Really reflecting on, and becoming aware of, all the choices you have, then thinking about the choices you make and why you make them, is crucial. A big point is transparency—helping people be transparent about choices they make and how things might change over time. That's possible to report, and because you preregistered, you can document these changes. I definitely hope that people use it as a way to report better on their decision-making process from before preregistering until after finishing their article.
AS: Now that I'm getting older, I look at it more from a systemic point of view. Of course, what Gisela said is spot-on. In addition, I see this template as one tool in our toolbox to achieve what I would call an idealized version of academia—which is fewer studies, but better. Being able to show all the hard work that’s done behind the scenes, besides the paper. Now papers are often just advertisements. What excites me is a dataset connected to a Docker container with all the necessary components that allow you to reproduce the figures and the results of the paper. So I think it's also looking at science in a different way—not as a rat race anymore, and not as a collection of papers that offer nothing or very little to society. I don't want to overgeneralize, but this still happens in many disciplines. This template is one way of achieving something more impactful.
GG: Because there are so many questions in this template, if you write a preregistration and really think about all the questions and answer them, you end up with a document that is impressive if you show it to other people—everything you preregistered, all the planning that went into this one study.
I also hope that it becomes more normal for people to look at preregistrations when they read articles and really acknowledge all the work that goes into this planning. I think that kind of acknowledgement can influence our judgment of articles. So I hope not only that people read the articles, but also the preregistrations.
AS: It also shows project management skills that are transferable. Not everybody who is doing a PhD or a Master’s can stay in academia. We often think that only the best stay, but that’s not necessarily true. If a person shows a preregistration template and the result is very neat, thoughtful, and well-constructed, that tells me as an employer that this person has good project management skills and knows the content well. These transferable skills can be very useful for individuals in careers outside of academia, as well.
Q: In addition to your work on the template, can you each share a bit about your research interests?
GG: I work in developmental research and focus on first language acquisition, so I study how infants learn their native language. I’m currently finalizing my PhD thesis on the influence of speaker voice information on early speech sound learning, where I look at whether infants learn sounds easier from familiar as compared to unfamiliar speakers. I also look at more method-focused topics in developmental EEG research. And of course I’m also interested in metascience topics, such as open science, but also reflexivity.
AS: I do research as a hobby because I’m no longer a researcher. I work at Erasmus University Rotterdam as the head of the Open and Responsible Science department. In my job, I don’t conduct research—but when I do research, it’s usually related to electrophysiology, statistics, and always something related to open science. It can be bottom-up movements (some of which you can read more about here) that have emerged to support open science. I’m also very interested in policies at the national and international level. Not only in the Netherlands—where they’re very advanced when it comes to open science—but more broadly in Europe, to try and understand where we are going and what expectations can be set for research.
Q: Antonio, what moved you out of the research space into what you're doing now?
AS: The rat race. I refused to work in academia when the work looked like that. In my work now, I’m trying to change academia into something more sustainable.
GG: What happens is that people who do not want to participate in that kind of work culture often leave, and then you lose them. Of course, the discussion about how to change academia is still happening, but a lot of people just leave.
Q: Do you think that leaving traditional academic settings allows people to be more effective in promoting open science because they have more freedom and are less beholden to incentive structures?
AS: What I notice is that it’s both. They haven’t lost their passion for research, for academic work, for changing the world and contributing to society. But academic work is not really built to change society anymore. It’s built to write papers. Once you feel that, whether or not it’s true—because of course it depends on many factors, including the field you’re in—you think, “OK, I might as well do something else with my abilities, but I still want to retain the passion.” So I think there’s more free time, and you have this drive and the ability to do more without being “punished” for it.
GG: In a sense, it has a lot to do with independence. If you get your money from a fixed contract or from your position, or you established a separate center with external funding, then you’re much freer to pursue other things. You can follow passions and be more controversial, and push things harder because you think they’re right. I don’t think it’s necessarily only people who leave academia, but people who are very independent. There are people in academia who have a very secure position and do a lot for open science. I think it has a lot to do with power, and how much power is above you.
On the other hand, a lot of work in the field of open science has also been pushed by early career researchers and grassroots initiatives. Maybe that’s because when you start out in science, you’re still very motivated to change things, which might get lost over the years if people do not move into positions of power.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share about the template or your hopes for the research community?
AS: In general, I hope that many people use the template, and I think this is already happening. We can see it through download numbers and access to our paper, which complement each other. I care about the other people who contributed to this and are still in academia, and Gisela is one example. I want them to receive the recognition they deserve.
I also want to say that this has been a truly community effort. All this started, by the way, during the COVID pandemic. Look what happens when people are given space to think—maybe that's the message!
GG: The collaborative nature of this project is important to mention. Antonio and I were a bit like project managers, but many people were involved. Everyone in the online and in-person hackathons contributed. We also used a Google Doc where people commented on each other's contributions. There was real interaction and discussions about which topics to include, which were less important, and the examples needed. There were many very inspirational contributors involved in creating the document.
Access the ERP Preregistration Template
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Propose A New Template
In 2023, COS launched a working group to help curate, evaluate, and promote high-quality preregistration templates that reflect the needs of different research communities on the Open Science Framework (OSF). As part of this ongoing effort, COS invites OSF users to propose new preregistration templates through this submission form.