Academic Community’s Perceptions of Registered Reports and Its Promotion Pathways: Findings from In-Depth Interviews

Registered Reports (RR) offer a promising pathway to mitigate publication bias, enhance data transparency, and improve research reproducibility by shifting peer review from results-based to methods-based evaluation. Despite growing international adoption, little is known about how Chinese researchers, editors, and research administrators perceive RR or what barriers impede its local implementation. This study employs grounded theory, drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 30 participants from diverse disciplines (biology, medicine, psychology, materials science, engineering, and management) and roles (early-career and senior researchers, journal editors, editorial board members, and research administrators). Interviews were transcribed, coded using ATLAS.ti, and analyzed iteratively through open, axial, and selective coding, yielding 94 concepts, 10 categories, and 5 core categories. A "motivity-resistance" model is constructed, capturing three interacting dimensions: value cognition, power structure, and behavioral actors. Findings reveal a pronounced decoupling between positive value perception and behavioral intention. While most participants acknowledge RR's theoretical advantages—improved methodological rigor, reduced selective reporting, and increased efficiency—actual willingness to adopt RR in their own practice remains low. Cognitive resistance stems from a deep-rooted research culture that prioritizes positive results and serendipitous discoveries, especially in exploratory fields such as materials science and synthetic biology, where preregistration is seen as potentially constraining innovation. From a power-structure perspective, the research evaluation system—encompassing promotion criteria, funding allocation, and journal rankings—provides virtually no institutional recognition for RR, while journal leaders fear operational burdens including workload surges and 'empty registrations.' Behaviorally, different stakeholders rationally weigh costs and benefits: earlycareer researchers value the certainty of inprinciple acceptance but worry about idea theft during firstround review; reviewers support the methodological focus yet are deterred by increased unpaid workload; editorial board members and editors express cautious optimism but demand local pilot evidence before committing. Disciplinary culture significantly affects RR acceptance, whereas regional reform policies show no notable influence. To break the lock-in loop of cognitive tradition, power asymmetry, and behavioral conservatism, the study proposes actionable strategies: reforming evaluation systems to reward process rigor and negative results; establishing a third-party pre-registration platform (led by academic societies) to protect intellectual property; crediting RR peer-review work as "academic service" in promotion criteria; developing lightweight manuscript management systems for RR workflows; and adopting a phased, discipline-specific pilot approach starting with method-oriented fields (e.g., clinical psychology, biomedicine) before gradual expansion. These findings demonstrate that promoting RR in China is not merely a technical adjustment but a systemic transformation requiring aligned changes in research culture, institutional power, and stakeholder incentives. This study provides empirical evidence and context-sensitive solutions to advance open science and publishing innovation in Chinese scientific journals.