LAUSR

### Summary box We thank Eboreime and Abimbola for raising a crucial issue in their recent BMJ Global Health editorial,1 asking whether a priori registration of research is necessity or absurdity. The structural barriers, colonial roots and power imbalances within global health research are widely recognised.2–7 Requiring a priori registration of research (including trials) is a clear absurdity, adding yet another barrier to limit the participation of researchers and people in communities in low-income and middle-income (LMIC) settings. As practitioners and researchers based in or working with community-based organisations (CBOs), we outline below the challenges of a priori registration for CBOs and other groups with limited resources, and why requiring a priori registration has the potential to systematically exclude important perspectives and methodologies of communities. We then propose alternate ways that accountability can be achieved for research and interventional studies in global health and beyond. The largest determinants of health are political, socioeconomic and cultural.8 Health research must therefore work across disciplines, incorporating the social sciences and their research methodologies, and treat populations as active human participants and not mere objects …