About this guide

This book/site provides a guide to implementing Adaptive Preregistration for Model-Based Research, with a focus on ecological modelling as it is used in both basic and applied contexts. This site covers the following topics:

  1. Background on researcher degrees of freedom, the risk of questionable research practices (QRPs), and introduction to preregistration as a tool for mitigating QRPs and improving transparency.
  2. Adaptive Preregistration
    1. Overview: What is adaptive preregistration, why do we need it for registering modelling analyses, and what are its defining features?
    2. A practical guide: How to implement adaptive preregistration using git and GitHub.
  3. Preregistration template for model-based research in ecology and conservation.

This practical guide accompanies the paper:

Gould, E., Jones, C. S., Yen, J. D. L., Fraser, H. S., Wootton, H. F., Good, M. K., Duncan, D. H., Hauser, C. E., Wintle, B. C., & Rumpff, L. (2026). ‘But I can’t preregister my research’: Improving the reproducibility and transparency of ecology and conservation with adaptive preregistration for model-based research. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 17(6), 2041-210x.70311. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.70311

Please cite this guide as:

Gould, E., Jones, C.S., Yen, J.D.L., Fraser, H.S., Wootton, H., Good, M.K., Duncan, D.H., Hauser, C.E., Wintle, B.C., Rumpff, L. & Fidler, F. (2026). EcoConsPreReg: A Guide to Adaptive Preregistration for Model-Based Research in Ecology and Conservation. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19064144