Publishing protocols through protocols.io

Topics on this page:

• Why publish through protocols.io?
• Types of protocols
• Method development communities

While there are multiple ways to share details of experimental methods, one existing solution is protocols.io, a platform for developing and sharing reproducible methods. This platform is free for academic users to publish and share protocols publicly.

Why publish through protocols.io?

Publishing your methods through protocols.io provides the following benefits:

• digitized protocols have a dedicated space that is persistent through time
• collaborators and new lab members can access protocols easily
• existing protocols can be updated, annotated, and altered, allowing them to be continually improved, while the previous versions remain available and accessible

Types of protocols

In general, a protocol is defined as a formal set of instructions describing the methodology and organization of a research project. protocols.io defines multiple types of protocols, including operational procedures, safety checklists, and computational workflows.

Publishing computational methods in protocols.io is extremely powerful when a new data generation system is being documented, as it unites the data collection and analysis approaches. An example of this approach is this protocol from the Human Cell Atlas Method Development Community: MARS-seq2.0: an experimental and analytical pipeline for indexed sorting combined with single-cell RNA sequencing.

See the Software and code section of this website for more information on resources for reproducibility of computational methods.

Method development communities

Protocols can be organized into groups, such as the following:

• Human Cell Atlas Method Development Community
• Neurodegeneration Method Development Community

Sharing a protocol with a community increases its discoverability and maximizes its reuse.