Protocols overview

• Publishing methods with protocols.io
• Sharing reagents and physical resources

It is standard practice to include information about experimental methods in published manuscripts. This section describes open science approaches to sharing protocols, including both written instructions for methods as well as physical resources (like reagents), that support the ability of other researchers to reproduce experimental results.

Publishing methods with protocols.io

The protocols.io topic page highlights the use of the protocols.io platform for sharing experimental results. In addition to publishing experimental methods in manuscripts, sharing detailed information about these methods via protocols.io increases visibility of your methods, facilitates onboarding of new lab members and collaborators to your projects, and improves the capacity of other researchers to reproduce your results.

Sharing reagents and physical resources

In addition to providing information about experimental methods, specific reagents, equipment, or other resources may be necessary to reproduce results. When viewed through the lens of open science, this means that such materials that may be reasonably requested by others are available without restrictions upon publication of the work. For more information on accessibility of materials, please see this article from PLOS.

Examples of physical reagents and other resources that can be shared include:

• cell lines
• plasmids/vectors
• animal models
• antibodies
• biomaterials and other specialized reagents used in laboratory experiments
• diagrams and instructions for custom lab equipment and devices

Some examples of organizations supporting community reagent repositories include:

• Addgene for plasmids
• Jackson Labs for mice/biospecimens
• Drosophila Stock Center at Bloomington for fruit fly stocks
• Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank for cell cultures and antibodies