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From Policy to Practice: The Evidence on Pre-Registration and Reporting Guidelines in Nursing Journal Publications
Priscilla K Gazarian1, Sybil Crawford1, Catherine Quill1
1Tan Changfen Graduate School of Nursing, U Mass Chan Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
Significance/Background:
Ensuring transparency in research dissemination and confidence in published findings is essential for advancing nursing science. Open science provides a framework for achieving this by promoting practices that make scientific knowledge openly accessible, rigorous, reproducible, and inclusive, thereby strengthening trustworthiness and accountability in scholarly work.
Aims:
This study aimed to evaluate the extent to which nursing journals require pre-registration and reporting guidelines, assess adherence to these practices in published research reports and systematic reviews, and explore their relationship with journal impact factors.
Methods:
We conducted an observational cross-sectional survey of nursing journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports database. After applying inclusion criteria, a 25% random sample (n = 35) was selected. Author guidelines were reviewed for pre-registration and reporting guideline requirements. For each journal, the first original research article and first systematic review from the most recent issue were examined for evidence of adherence.
Results:
Among sampled journals, 54% recommended or required pre-registration for original research and 14% for systematic reviews. Reporting guidelines were recommended or required by 71% of journals for original research and 74% for systematic reviews. In sampled articles, pre-registration occurred in 8.6% of original research papers and 35.7% of systematic reviews, while reporting guideline use was documented in 20% of original research and 64.3% of systematic reviews. Journal impact factors were slightly higher among journals that recommended or required these practices, but differences were not statistically significant.
Conclusions:
Pre-registration remains underutilized in nursing research despite journal recommendations. Reporting guidelines are more commonly used, especially in systematic reviews.
Linking Evidence To Action:
Improving research integrity requires collaboration among all stakeholders beyond journal policy enforcement. Key strategies include training researchers, screening submissions for pre-registration and reporting guidelines, involving peer reviewers in compliance checks, and leveraging librarians for comprehensive searches.
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