We have learned that a colleague in our field is the subject of allegations of potential research misconduct pertaining to pre-registration practices on the Open Science Framework (OSF). While we are obviously not aware of the details of the allegation and are thus not in a position to comment on any particular about that situation, we believe it is critical to share our professional opinion about general practices when someone’s career is at stake, especially in the absence of any formal published guidelines. Accordingly, as members of the field we believe that item (1) and (2) below clearly do not represent a significant departure from accepted practices or otherwise constitute evidence of research misconduct nor represent nor are a serious research error while (3) would clearly represent one such departure.

1. A PI instructs a researcher to pre-register his/her research hypotheses with the OSF when the PI knows that the analyses had been conducted or were underway. It was explicitly part of such instruction that any analyses underway or conducted be specified accurately in the pre-registered sampling plan (note: the “sampling plan” page of the preregistration form provides the option to register following analysis of data and a response box to specify the current status of any analyses).
2. A PI instructs a researcher to pre-register his/her research hypotheses with the OSF when the PI knows that the analyses had been conducted or were underway. It was not part of such instruction one way or another that any analyses underway or conducted be specified accurately in the pre-registered sampling plan (“”).
3. A PI instructs a researcher to pre-register his/her research hypotheses with the OSF when the PI knows that the analyses had been conducted or were underway. It was explicitly part of such instruction that any analyses underway or conducted not be specified accurately in the pre-registered sampling plan (“”).

To be clear, our opinion does not comment on the question of whether any of these options are ideal or even preferable practices. Our opinion is that (1) and (2) would clearly not be a significant departure from accepted practices or otherwise constitute or be evidence of research misconduct or serious error whereas (3) would be.Our names, titles and email addresses are included below.

**This document will only be shared with the relevant university authorities conducting the investigation into these allegations