--- name: revedres-proposal-and-commissioning description: Use when writing the protocol, fixing scope and eligibility, and (where applicable) preregistering a systematic review or meta-analysis before searching, for a Review of Educational Research (RER) manuscript. Produces the a-priori plan; it does not run the search (revedres-literature-synthesis) or impose the conceptual spine (revedres-organizing-framework). --- # Protocol & Preregistration (revedres-proposal-and-commissioning) ## When to trigger - Topic selection cleared the four RER fit tests and it is time to lock the plan - You are about to search but have not written down inclusion/exclusion rules - You want a PROSPERO / OSF registration so the search is demonstrably a-priori - A reviewer is likely to ask "were these inclusion rules set before or after you saw the results?" ## RER is SUBMITTED, not commissioned — the protocol replaces the commission Annual Reviews *invite* their authors; **RER reviews are submitted and peer-reviewed**, so no editor pre-blesses your scope. The credibility that an invitation would have signaled must instead come from a **transparent, a-priori protocol**. For a systematic review or meta-analysis this is not optional polish — it is the difference between a synthesis and a fishing expedition. (RER occasionally publishes *solicited* analytic reviews of special topics, but the default and the bar is a strong unsolicited submission — 检索于 2026-06；以官网为准.) ## The protocol: decisions to fix BEFORE you search Write these down first; a reviewer who senses they were chosen after seeing results will distrust the whole review. 1. **Question in PICO/PICOS form.** Population (learners/settings), Intervention/exposure or construct, Comparison, Outcomes, Study designs. This *is* the scope. 2. **Eligibility criteria.** Inclusion and exclusion on population, constructs, designs, outcomes, language, publication type (peer-reviewed? grey literature? dissertations?), and date range — each with a reason. 3. **Information sources & search strategy.** Databases (ERIC, PsycINFO, Education Source, Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations), grey-literature sources, and at least one full search string to be reported verbatim. 4. **Screening procedure.** Two independent screeners at title/abstract and full-text; how disagreements are resolved; the reliability statistic you will report. 5. **Data extraction & coding scheme.** What you will code from each study (design, sample, measures, effect sizes, moderators, risk-of-bias) and the codebook. 6. **Synthesis plan.** Meta-analytic model (fixed/random/multilevel/robust variance), effect-size metric, planned moderator and sensitivity analyses, and publication-bias diagnostics — *or* the explicit qualitative/narrative synthesis method for a non-poolable literature. 7. **Risk-of-bias / quality appraisal tool** chosen in advance (e.g. a design-appropriate instrument). ## Preregistration: register the plan, then deviate transparently - **Systematic reviews / meta-analyses:** register the protocol on **PROSPERO** (health-adjacent) or **OSF** before screening; cite the registration in the manuscript. Use **PRISMA-P** as the protocol-reporting checklist. - A registration is a commitment, not a cage — you *may* change the plan, but you must **flag and justify every deviation** in the paper (planned vs. exploratory analyses kept distinct). - Purely conceptual/critical syntheses are not "registered" the same way, but they still need an explicit, written scope and search logic that the paper reports. ## Why a-priori discipline pays off at RER specifically A protocol is not bureaucratic overhead — it is what lets a *submitted* review be trusted the way an *invited* one is. Three concrete payoffs: - **It pre-empts the "fishing expedition" objection.** A reviewer who sees that inclusion rules, the model, and the moderators were fixed before screening cannot claim they were chosen to produce a clean result. - **It makes the PRISMA flow honest.** Counts flow from rules set in advance, so the diagram reports what the search found rather than what survived after-the-fact pruning. - **It separates confirmatory from exploratory.** Anything not in the protocol is labeled exploratory in the paper — which protects the headline result and still lets you report interesting surprises. A common failure is treating the protocol as a draft of the paper. It is not prose; it is a set of **decision rules** a stranger could execute and reach your corpus. Write it as rules, register it, then let the search run against it. ## Checklist - [ ] Question in PICO/PICOS; scope bounded the same way the search will be - [ ] Eligibility criteria written with a reason for each inclusion/exclusion rule - [ ] Databases + grey-literature sources listed; at least one full search string drafted - [ ] Dual independent screening defined; reliability statistic chosen - [ ] Coding scheme / codebook drafted before extraction - [ ] Synthesis plan fixed (meta-analytic model + moderators + bias diagnostics, or narrative method) - [ ] Risk-of-bias tool chosen a-priori - [ ] Registered on PROSPERO/OSF (or scope/search logic written for a conceptual synthesis) ## Anti-patterns - Searching first, then writing inclusion rules to fit the studies you liked - "Random-effects, REML" chosen after seeing heterogeneity rather than in advance - No codebook — coders improvise, and reliability cannot be defended later - Treating registration as a formality, then silently changing the question or outcomes - Promising an exhaustive search but planning only one database ## Output format ``` 【Question (PICOS)】 【Eligibility】 【Sources + search】 【Screening】dual independent? Y/N; reliability stat = 【Coding scheme】codebook drafted before extraction? Y/N 【Synthesis plan】 【Risk-of-bias tool】 【Registration】PROSPERO/OSF id or "conceptual synthesis — scope written" 【Next step】→ revedres-literature-synthesis (run the search to a PRISMA flow) ```