Registered Reports (RRs) are an academic article format where submissions are peer reviewed based on methodological rigour before data collection, with successful submissions granted "in-principle acceptance". This means a journal will publish the final article if the authors have conducted their work as described in the RR (and explained any deviations from the plan), regardless of results. In recent years, funders and journals have formed RR funding partnerships (RRFPs), where review processes for funding applications and manuscripts are combined to varying degrees. RRFPs assure funders that funded projects are carried out as planned, are highly likely to be published, and can be done without the additional time and effort of submitting to multiple journals before acceptance. RRFPs could improve the robustness of scientific research by improving methods before data collection, prevent the cherry-picking of results, and reduce the bias towards only publishing "interesting" results. Since 2020, Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has piloted an RRFP involving a consortium of journals—a significant departure from previous one-funder-one-journal models. This consortium model allows funded researchers to choose from multiple participating journals and does not mandate RR submission. Here we report on the first evaluation of this consortium-based RRFP. We conducted qualitative interviews with CRUK RRFP stakeholders including RR experts and advocates, staff at CRUK and other funders, editors at consortium journals, and researchers participating in the RRFP. These interviews identified markers of research quality from diverse perspectives, explored barriers to RR and RRFP adoption, and informed the development of evaluation tools. Our interviews revealed several implementation challenges. For example, researchers often cannot wait for in-principle acceptance before commencing their work, making RRs impractical for many time-bound funded projects. Additionally, despite the intent to streamline review processes, substantial duplication of effort persists between funder and journal reviews. Interviewees identified opportunities for closer coordination and more efficient and devolved review workflows. We will present these findings with recommendations for improving RRFP design and implementation. We also developed two evaluation instruments refined through multiple rounds of expert feedback. First, a rubric allows funders to assess research quality of research presented in publications from funded projects (both RRs and traditional articles), covering methodological rigour, transparency practices, and subjective dimensions such as novelty and importance of findings. Second, a questionnaire captures the qualitative, intangible experience of researchers who have published a complete RR: changes to workflows, pain points in the RR process, and shifts in attitudes toward open science practices more broadly. These tools provide a template for ongoing evaluation efforts by funders and institutions implementing similar schemes. Beyond the evaluation findings, we discuss the scope and limitations of RRs and RRFPs. Not all research can be easily conducted with fully pre-specified methods, and the suitability of RRs varies across research epistemologies and disciplinary contexts. By examining both the promise and limitations of RRs and RRFPs, we aim to inform more nuanced implementation of open research practices that considers methodological rigour with practical feasibility and epistemic diversity.

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Presented at the Future of Open Research Conference 2026 (FOR2026) at the Technical University of Munich Institute of Advanced Studies on 5 May 2026 (14:00-16:10 UTC+2 Session 4: Openness and Scholarly Communication, chair Rena Alcalay): https://opensciencestudies.eu/for-2026-conference/for2026-program/