Here we present a preregistration template for ecological models in ecology, conservation and related fields. This template is based on the EcoConsPreReg: A Guide to Adaptive Preregistration for Model-Based Research in Ecology and Conservation (v1.0.2) by Gould et al. (2024)¹.

quarto use template egouldo/EcoConsModPreReg

This will install the extension and create an example qmd file containing the EcoConsPreReg template that you can use as a starting place for your preregistration. The template source code is located here: template.qmd.

For non-trivial modelling studies, especially where model parameter and structure is in any way data-contingent, we recommend taking an Adaptive Preregistration approach (insert cross-ref to preprint).

To use the quarto template in your project, run the following command in the terminal:

quarto use template egouldo/EcoConsModPreReg

This will create template.qmd (in the working directory / root directory if unspecified as above), and rename the template file to the name of the enclosing directory.

Edit the template file: Replace author, author-affiliations, keywords, title and abstract yaml metadata as relevant to your study. All preregistration items should be completed unless marked as optional, or are not applicable to your study.

The EcoConsModPreReg format can be rendered to html, pdf, or docx. Standard Quarto formatting options are also available, and can be overridden in the document's yaml metadata, see the quarto scholarly writing guide.

Note that to output multiple author affiliations with footnotes when rendering to pdf, the yaml tag affil-id: must be provided for each author rather than using the default quarto affiliations: tag as for html and docx formats. This is because the pdf output uses the LaTeX authblk package to format author affiliations. For details, see https://stackoverflow.com/a/76016913/4593464.

Each listed author / contributor's intended contribution should be provided with the CRediT taxonomy. For details, see: quarto yaml options for CRediT role values.

EcoConsModPreReg documents default to using the Methods in Ecology and Evolution journal citation style. This can be overridden by adding your own .csl file to the document directory, and updating the document's yaml metadata to point to the new .csl file, see the quarto citations authoring guide for details.