The 2026/27 Preregistration Challenge for Early PhD Students!
You are at the Doctoral School of Psychology and you started planning your studies for your dissertation?
Then this challenge is interesting for you:
WRITE a preregistration for one of your planned studies (if you have not done so already),
UPLOAD this preregistration on a repository (e.g., the Open Science Framework), and
SEND the link of this preregistration (or an anonymized link) to the Graz Open Science Initiative via this form: https://surveys.uni-graz.at/433361?lang=de
We will scan all preregistrations in regard to their quality, determine the best one and announce the winner at the Doctoral Congress in spring 2027.
If you have questions, please contact us via open.science(at)uni-graz.at
Please find more details in the following:
More Details
You can submit if you are an early PhD student, who i) currently plans or conducts studies for their PhD thesis, ii) can show that these studies contain a preregistration, iii) has NOT published a PhD related paper so far (if you published a paper already, you may be eligible for the Open Science Award).
If you prepare a future study (usually before data is collected), you have to write a preregistration (e.g., OSF Preregistration, AsPredicted Preregistration, PRP-Quant Prergistration), where you specify all variables, the research design, the hypotheses, and the analysis plan (see a guide here: Brohmer et al., 2026, doi.org/10.25364/978-3-903374-47-8_04). Note: if you have already written a preregistration for a study, this is also fine!
The preregistration needs to be submitted to a repository (e.g., the Open Science Framework, the ZPID, the AsPredicted site) and should contain a link (or anonymized link).
This link should be sent to GOSI here: https://surveys.uni-graz.at/433361?lang=de
You also need to tell us briefly about your study and who your supervisor is.
This way you qualify for the challenge.
If you have written multiple preregistrations throughout the year, you need to select ONE.
This will be two weeks before the spring Doctoral Congress, but the date is not yet set (probably end of May / beginning of June 2027).
GOSI members will scan all submitted preregistrations, check them for their quality (see criteria also in Brohmer et al., 2026, https://doi.org/10.25364/978-3-903374-47-8_04), and make a ranking.
The winner will be announced after the spring Doctoral Congress 2027. GOSI members, who are doctoral students, will not participate in this challenge to avoid a conflict of interest.