  Registered reports are scientific publications which begin the publication
process by first having the detailed research protocol, including key research
questions, reviewed and approved by peers. Subsequent analysis and results are
published with minimal additional review, even if there was no clear support
for the underlying hypothesis, as long as the approved protocol is followed.
Registered reports can prevent several questionable research practices and give
early feedback on research designs. In software engineering research,
registered reports were first introduced in the International Conference on
Mining Software Repositories (MSR) in 2020. They are now established in three
conferences and two pre-eminent journals, including Empirical Software
Engineering. We explain the motivation for registered reports, outline the way
they have been implemented in software engineering, and outline some ongoing
challenges for addressing high quality software engineering research.
