Editorial: What are registered reports and why are they important to the future of human resource management research?

Human Resource Management Journal (HRMJ) is proud to offer a registered reports pathway to publication. A registered report is an innovative method of publication in which authors submit a research proposal for peer review prior to the collection and analysis of the data. At Stage 1, the Introduction, Literature Review, Theory, Hypotheses and a detailed Research Methods Protocol are peer reviewed. If the paper is accepted ‘in principle’ at this stage, the authors can then proceed to Stage 2, in which they collect and analyse the data according to the agreed protocol and write up the Results and Discussion sections of the study. The primary purpose of a registered report is to obviate the use of questionable research practices and insidious p-hacking. For this reason, only deductive (theory-testing) research is appropriate for this pathway to publication. Research published via a registered report is conceptually and methodologically robust, falsifiable and less likely to fall victim to irreproducibility. This article explains what registered reports are, why they are good for scientific discovery, how the human resource management (HRM) field can benefit from offering this pathway to publication and how HRM scholars can submit a registered report to HRMJ.