Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A pre-registered RCT reporting CI of intervention effect crossing zero, interpreted as failing to support efficacy at the studied effect size
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A paper that frames a null result as positive by switching to a secondary outcome is HARKing, not honest null-result publication
Editorial commentary
A null-result publication is a peer-reviewed paper reporting that a study’s primary, pre-specified analysis returned results statistically consistent with no effect — or, in equivalence or non-inferiority designs, consistent with no clinically meaningful difference — with that absence of effect explicitly framed and interpreted as itself an informative finding, not a study failure.
How this differs from a negative-result paper
Null-result publication is the statistically precise sub-case of the broader negative-result paper category: it specifically concerns a pre-specified hypothesis test that failed to reject the null at the chosen significance threshold, whereas “negative result” more loosely covers any unsupported hypothesis, including findings not framed around a formal significance test at all. Both serve the same purpose as a counter-measure to publication bias.
Example
A pre-registered randomised controlled trial reporting a confidence interval for the treatment effect that crosses zero, interpreted plainly as failing to support efficacy at the studied effect size, rather than being reframed around a post-hoc subgroup finding.
What it is not
Switching the paper’s emphasis to a secondary outcome that happened to reach significance, after the primary analysis came back null, is HARKing (hypothesising after the results are known) — a form of reporting bias, not a legitimate null-result publication, regardless of how the paper is ultimately framed.
Also known as
Null finding publication · No-effect paper
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Null result publication"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication",
"name": "Null result publication",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication",
"description": "A peer-reviewed publication reporting that a study's primary analysis returned results statistically consistent with no effect (or, in equivalence/non-inferiority designs, consistent with no clinically meaningful difference), explicitly framed and interpreted as informative about the absence of effect.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/null-result-publication",
"sameAs": [
"Null finding publication",
"No-effect paper"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:06:40",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:29:42",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
