Moving towards openness: introduction to the registered reports and data notes article collection

Abstract

Improving the transparency and openness of health psychology and behavioural medicine research is of critical importance. This research has a profound impact on people’s lives, and the majority of this research is also publicly funded. Therefore, ensuring transparency in health psychology and behavioural medicine research is essential to make the most of limited research resources and to deliver the greatest possible benefits to individuals and society. However, as with many areas of research, issues with scientific quality and integrity such as publication bias and reproducibility issues exist in this field (Aert et al., 2019). As such, recent times have seen increasing interest in the use of open science practices within health psychology and behavioural medicine (Kwasnicka et al., 2021; Segerstrom et al., 2023).