North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership

Camilla Woodrow-Hill, Psychology, University of Manchester (2020 Cohort)

One hurdle many early-stage PhD students may encounter is being unable to present at conferences until later in their PhD journey due to a lack of study data. Fortunately, with the increasing awareness of open-research practices, some conferences are inviting researchers to submit pre-registration posters or talks. This means exactly what the name suggests – researchers are given the opportunity to present research that they have not pre-registered or collected data for yet. This gives researchers the valuable opportunity to present their current research plans and collect feedback from the academic community at a point when they are still able to make changes and improvements to their study design. It also increases awareness in the academic community of research that is currently in the pipeline, and reduces the chances of HARKing once data is collected for these pre-registered studies, increasing the rigor of the research. Importantly, pre-registration presentations also give early-stage PhD students the opportunity to practice presenting their work to various audiences to enhance their presentation skills – something that doesn’t come naturally to many.