A Gentle Push Toward Leading Your First Multisite Registered Report: Resources and Recommendations from an Early-Career Coordinator

Multisite collaborations are becoming increasingly common in psychological science, offering a powerful opportunity for testing effects across diverse samples. However, leading such projects can appear overwhelmingly demanding and inaccessible, particularly for early-career researchers or teams with limited resources and the pressure of strict deadlines. This article offers a practical, experience-based guide for coordinating small-to-medium-scale multisite studies, drawing on lessons learned during my PhD while leading a multisite Registered Report. The structure follows the typical stages of a multisite initiative, providing templates, examples, and recommendations at each step: From preregistering the protocol, with a justified sample size based on power analyses for multilevel data structures and a thoroughly piloted task, to recruiting labs by making the project attractive, with clear criteria for co-authorship and credit recognition. From there, to collecting multisite data with tools to translate materials, track laboratories, register participant details, or to navigate unexpected problems, and finally to preparing and submitting the manuscript to journals and repositories. Although several published guides already exist, this piece adds a personal perspective on what can realistically be expected from smaller collaborations, which often require different strategies, and how to adapt best practices to more modest settings. All resources are openly shared, and the aim is to encourage other early-career researchers to consider leading such projects themselves. Multisite studies do not need to follow a big scale to be valid, powerful, and impactful. With a well-defined protocol and a small but motivated network of collaborators, your team can also contribute with high-quality, collaborative science.