Preregistration poster badge

Badge your prereg poster

Show how you're building credibility and encourage other neuroscientists to get feedback on planned work



What is a preregistration poster badge?

We think preregistration posters provide a really useful tool to help build credibility in neuroscience research at an early stage, and want to see this more widely adopted within the neuroscience community.  


Prereg posters are still a relatively new innovation, and as part of our Credibility in Neuroscience campaign we're keen to make neuroscientists, and conference organisers, more aware of them - and how they can help to improve credibility. 


That's why we've developed a badge for neuroscientists to include on their posters to help highlight this poster type, and help encourage others to consider this in the future.  


The design is modelled to fit with the open science badges introduced by the Center of Open Science, which can help signal aspects of open science in the work - such as data or materials being shared, or the work being preregistered. 

How can I use the prereg poster badge?

If you've already submitted your abstract for an upcoming conference and are developing your poster, then simply download the badge and add to your poster as you finalise it.


These posters should be for planned studies yet to be undertaken, rather than research already completed. They usually contain an introduction setting out the study's context, detail on the methods that will be used to test the hypothesis, and the intended approach for statistical analysis of the results.


The BNA2021 Festival of Neuroscience is a great opportunity to present a prereg poster. Find out details on registration and prereg poster submission here.

How are prereg posters being received among researchers?

BNA2019 was the first large conference to support prereg posters in significant numbers, with nearly a fifth of all presented posters (100/491) in this new format, covering a diverse range of neuroscience topics and disciplines.


Presenters of the prereg posters surveyed after BNA2019 found them to be a useful tool in promoting academic discussion of planned and on-going research, encouraging open science, and benefiting early career researchers. [4]


It's important that where conferences introduce this format, clear information is given to both submitters and reviewers on what prereg posters should contain - we're more than happy to share our own experience with this format from the BNA conference.

Ok, I'm in. Where can I submit my prereg poster?

For BNA2021, we're once again looking forward to neuroscientists presenting their research plans through the prereg poster format. You can find out more about how to submit a prereg poster to this by reading our BNA2021 poster abstract submission guidelines.


We're also delighted to see other conferences start to provide opportunities to present prereg posters, and the Center for Open Science has identified ten conferences so far accepting submissions of these (see Allied Initiatives section on the COS website).

What else is the BNA doing to promote use of prereg posters?

In addition to encouraging use of the prereg poster format, we're looking at how we can better identify the format and help people demonstrate their use. The open science badges developed by COS are a great way to help show to others that open science practices have been used, with the view of helping display new community norms. With that in mind, we are looking at introducing a prereg badge at BNA2021 that can be added to accepted posters. 

 

Information for conference organisers

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How can conference organisers find out more about prereg posters?

If you're organising a conference and thinking about introducing prereg posters, it's worth reading around the topic - and making sure those submitting and reviewing these posters understand how they are intended to be used, and what makes them different to standard conference posters.


See the footnotes below for articles specific to this topic, and the COS website for open science initiatives.

What advice do you have for conference organisers?

Preparation is important, as it's highly likely that researchers submitting a prereg poster will be the first person in their lab group (or university) to submit one, and so they won't be able to simply look at what someone has done before! Please feel free to

use the explanatory text and/or abstract submission guidelines that we are using for BNA2021 (in whole or part).  We also recommend the following:


  • Make sure your reviewers are familiar with the concept of preregistration posters. Despite sending information to abstract reviewers beforehand, we still had quite a few reviewers rejecting prereg abstracts on the basis that they lacked results. In future, we will spend more time making sure they know what’s required, how to review them, while allowing time to answer any questions they may have. 
  • Pass on constructive feedback from reviewers - and give presenters the opportunity to improve their abstract before it's accepted. One of the main aims of prereg posters is to get useful input. If you, as an organiser, receive comments from your abstract reviewers which will improve the abstract and/or presentation, then take the time to pass on to the submitter so that they can act on the feedback. Ideally give them the chance to incorporate improvements into their abstract before it is accepted and used in the meeting programme and /or published. 
  • Be prepared to be flexible about what’s actually presented. Prereg posters are likely to vary widely in how much data they actually contain, from no data to a set or sets of results. Although the ideal is to present work that hasn't yet been carried out (so that plans can still be changed), the format of preregistration posters is still at a very early stage of development and it's likely you'll receive a wide range of posters. 

Ok, we're prereg-ready. How can we promote the posters at our conference?

Open Science badges were introduced for journals to acknowledge papers which met criteria for open science practices of sharing data, sharing materials, or that were preregistered. You can do the same by having stickers ready to put on posters which have used these practices, further highlighting preregistration. (We found that getting Open Science stickers on your poster was very popular!).


Also, you can celebrate your preregistration posters - and your standard posters too! If you run a poster competition, consider introducing separate categories for preregistration posters. It's important to celebrate those who are venturing into these new ways of doing research, but it's also important to recognise that they are different from 'traditional' posters which include results, and it wouldn't be fair to include both types in the same category. Celebrate the new and celebrate the not-new too! 


Lastly, let the Center for Open Science know about your prereg posters, so you can be added to the list of conferences using them.



Information for prereg poster presenters

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