Many animals are increasingly reliant on living close or in urban environments. For them, neophobia – a trait that denotes the fearfulness of novelty (Mettke-Hoffmann, 2022) – may influence how well the species but also individuals of the same species adjust to the (human-induced) changes that characterise these environments (Lowry et al., 2013).

 

Typically, neophobia in non-human animals is assessed through behavioural tests, most often by measuring the time it takes an individual to approach a novel object or food that is positioned next to a novel object. Increasingly, resarchers are acknowledging that the social context may influence the behaviour of individuals in such situations, and several hypotheses have been proposed to explain a potential influence of social context on neophobic responses. 

 

In the current study, Allaert et al. (2024) will use a within-subject design to test three hypotheses with juvenile herring gulls (Larus argentatus): 1) the risk dilution hypothesis, accoding to which gulls will exhibit smaller neophobic responses when tested in a group than when tested alone, 2) the negotiation hypothesis, according to which gulls will exhibit stronger neophobic responses when tested in a group than when tested alone, and 3) the social conformity hypothesis, according to which those more neophobic individuals will show a smaller neohobic response when tested in a group than when tested alone while less neophobic individuals will exhibit the opposite pattern.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two reviewers over two rounds of revisions. During the revisions, the authors clarified the conceptual arguments of the manuscript (including why juveniles are being tested), and edited the methods, including timing of testing, adjustments to the way that the experimental and control conditions will be run, how the planned sample size will be ensured given that at the time of testing, some chicks may be of a different species (this will become evident later on), how relatedness between the chicks will be dealt with, as well as how the behavioural coding will be conducted. Thus, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/u4b7q
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 

 

 

 

 

1. Mettke-Hofmann, C. (2022). Neophobia. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_908

 

2. Lowry, H., Lill, A., & Wong, B. B. (2013). Behavioural responses of wildlife to urban environments. Biological Reviews, 88, 537-549. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12012

 

3.  Allaert, R., Knoch, S., Braem, S., Debeer, D, Martel, A., Müller, W., Stienen E., Lens, L., & Verbruggen. F. (2024) In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/u4b7q

​​The responsible conduct of research (RCR) is crucial for the health of the research ecosystem: high quality research should lead to more credible findings and increase public trust. However, the dimensions and responsibilities that make up RCR differ across disciplines, who together can learn from one another to ensure rigorous, transparent, and reliable research and foster healthier research culture.

 

Bridging this gap, in their Stage 1 Registered Report, Field and colleagues (2024) outline their plans for a large-scale Delphi study to evaluate academics' perceived levels of importance of the most crucial elements of RCR and how these align and differ across disciplines. First, they plan to assemble a Delphi panel of RCR experts across multiple disciplines who will evaluate a list of RCR dimensions to suggest any additions. Then, these same panellists will judge each RCR dimension on its importance within their discipline of expertise, with iterative rounds of ratings until stability is reached. In this latter phase, the goal is to probe which items are more broadly appreciated by the sample (i.e., those that are perceived as a universally valuable RCR practice), versus which might be more discipline specific. The findings will present the median importance ratings and categories of response agreement across the entire panel and between different disciplines. Finally, to contextualise these findings, the team will analyse qualitative findings from open-ended text responses with a simple form of thematic analysis. From this, the team will develop a framework, using the identified RCR dimensions, that reflects the needs of the academic community. 

 

By mapping a broader multidisciplinary perspective on RCR, this research will fill the gap between the two extremes that existing conceptualisations of RCR tend to fall under: high-level frameworks designed to be universally applicable across all disciplines (e.g., the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity) and prescriptive guides tailored to the practical instruction of researchers within a specific discipline or field (e.g., RCR training designed for members of a university department). The hope is that this will stimulate a more nuanced understanding and discussion of cross-disciplinary conceptions of RCR.

 

Five expert reviewers with field expertise assessed the Stage 1 manuscript over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed and informed responses to the reviewer’s comments, the recommenders judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA). 

 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/xmnu5
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.  
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

References
 

Field, S. M., Thompson, J., van Drimmelen, T., Ferrar, J., Penders, B., de Rijcke, S., & Munafò, M. R. (2024). Mapping Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Responsible Conduct of Research: A Delphi Study. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/xmnu5

What relationship can be expected between the perception of risk and compliance with protective measures? The authors of the current study measured the perceived risk of COVID-19 and compliance with infection control in Norway during the first year of the pandemic. While the authors state that the perceived risk has a positive association with compliance, they also hypothesize that both measures at Tn will predict the other at Tn+1, indicating a dynamic and bi-directional relationship. Finding support (or not) for this hypothesis can be crucial for developing interventions that will encourage compliance with infection control measures. The analysis will be quantitative.

 

The authors already collected the data, and the risk of bias due to the accessibility of data was discussed extensively during the peer-reviewing process. In summary, the authors will set up an alpha at 0.01, perform a multiverse analysis and present all the results associated. They will analyse the model with various ways of handling outliers, and the analysis will be made by a colleague who did not have access to the data. The authors already provided a script to produce the multiverse analysis. The recommender and reviewers agreed that these procedures are sufficient to control for the level of bias due to the accessibility of data.

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth review. Based on ​detailed responses to reviewers’ and the recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance.​​​

 

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 1. At least some of the data/evidence that will be used to the answer the research question has been accessed and observed by the authors, the data analyst excepted, including key variables, but the authors certify that they have not yet performed ANY of their preregistered analyses, and in addition they have taken stringent steps to reduce the risk of bias.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 

Bjørkheim, S., Hystad, S., & Sætrevik, B. (2024). Relationship between perceived risk and compliance to infection control measures during the first year of a pandemic. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/epdn8

 

For many of us, music is far more than an auditory experience. It can trigger emotional reactions, evoke memories, and wide-ranging associations with other sensory modalities and cognitive states. Music also varies between different cultures in several ways. It remains unclear in how far the broader associations music has differs between cultural contexts, both in terms of the music itself and the listener. This study by Hadavi et al. (2024) seeks to better understand these relationships. Using an online survey targeted at 72 participants from anglophone Canada, Farsi-speaking Iran, and Japan (24 from each location), the researchers aim to address two straightforward hypotheses.

 

First, does faster tempo of music increase ratings of emotional arousal? Second, do participants match faster tempo music with denser visual line patterns? This latter measure aims to quantify the visual imagery evoked by the musical pieces. Imagery is a loaded term that is not used consistently across the cognitive neuroscience literature; one could argue that what the researchers are actually here is in fact mainly an association between tempo and a visual representation of tempo (or frequency). It certainly seems doubtful that persons listening to a piece of music will form a mental image of a bundle of horizontal lines. Yet, irrespective of how to interpret this experimental variable, it quantifies something about the impression listeners have when experiencing music, and whether these associations differ cross-culturally. The experiment has a balanced design, incorporating excerpts of musical pieces from each of the three cultural contexts, including both solo and group music. While the sample size is comparably low, given the online nature of data collection, it is based on a power analysis and relatively large expected effect sizes.

 

The proposed study was evaluated by three expert reviewers and the recommender over three rounds of in-depth review, plus a final round ironing out smaller issues. Reviewer Juan David Leongómez was recruited as a co-author after the first round of revisions. Following this process, the recommender decided that the manuscript met Stage 1 criteria and awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

References
 
1.Hadavi, S., Kuroda, J., Shimozono, T., Leongómez, J. D. & Savage, P. E. (2024). Cross-cultural relationships between music, emotion, and visual imagery: A comparative study of Iran, Canada, and Japan. In principle acceptance of Version 6 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/zdnkm