Abstract Background Difficulty in participant recruitment is a significant barrier to clinical dementia studies. The Dutch Brain Research Registry (www.hersenonderzoek.nl) was set up for online recruitment of participants for neuroscience studies in the Netherlands. Here we present first results with respect to participant registration and enrollment in studies. To evaluate this process, we investigated which demographic, social and health‐related factors were related to study participation. Method Registrants were primarily recruited through social media. The online registration process consists of a 10‐minute questionnaire including demographics, medical history, subjective memory complaints, medication and substance use. Registrants eligible for studies were selected based on provided data and invited by email. Those who accepted the invitation were contacted by the study investigator for further evaluation and enrollment. The relation of participant factors with study participation was analyzed using multivariate regression analyses. Result In the first eighteen months, 17.218 registrants signed up (58±11 years old, 78% female). Twenty‐eight studies have recruited participants via our platform, including 9 online observational studies, 14 onsite observational studies and 5 onsite intervention studies. Prescreening identified 34.696 eligible registrants, of whom 12.637 (36%) accepted the study invitation. After further evaluation by the study investigator, 10.661 registrants (31%) were successfully enrolled in studies. Compared to non‐participants, participants enrolled in studies were more often older (OR=1.32, CI=1.23‐1.40), male (OR=1.07, CI=1.00‐1.13), higher educated (OR=1.29, CI=1.22‐1.36), retired or not working (OR=1.14, CI=1.06‐1.21), non‐smoking (OR=1.59, CI=1.45‐1.73), reported a better health (OR=1.29, CI=1.18‐1.39) and had a 1 st degree family member with dementia (OR=1.17, CI=1.11‐1.24). Conclusion The Dutch Brain Research Registry facilitates effective matching of potential participants to ...