国产乱伦

Author: Christina Emery

Head of Thought Leadership Programmes

With its emphasis on transparency, accessibility, and collaboration, open science speeds up scientific progress and facilitates the rapid sharing of knowledge. As a researcher, sharing your research outputs openly is crucial to address the world’s most urgent challenges, from poverty to climate change. In this blog, we’ll explore how and why you should share your protocols, and the benefits to you and the wider scientific community.

What are protocols and why are they key to advancing hands-on and observational research?

Protocols are written plans or step-by-step guides that explain exactly how you conduct your experiments or procedures or collect your data. Along with data and code, they form key elements of open science by enabling researchers to properly interpret, then replicate, build on and validate each other’s work. Put simply, if another researcher hopes to understand and reproduce your process or result, or reanalyse your data, they need to know exactly what you did and how you did it.

Sharing your protocols supports transparency and accountability, which fosters trust in your research findings. Sharing openly ensures equity by making the latest techniques accessible to researchers everywhere, not just those in well-resourced institutions. It also allows for the proper credit and recognition for everyone involved in the work.

Transparent protocols bring additional benefits, such as improved consistency, efficiency, and collaboration. They standardise processes, making it easier for others to follow your methods, and clarify ethical considerations, such as consent and permissions. They also help you to meet the compliance requirements of funders, your institutions, and publishers.

The ‘Methods Matter’ movement

A new cohort of advocates are championing the case for open protocols, and are gaining momentum. For example, in 2024, a new report, “” was issued by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. It seeks to improve the reporting of detailed, reusable, and open methods and step-by-step protocols in the life sciences. PRO-MaP outlines actions that four stakeholder groups—researchers, research institutions and departments, publishers and editors, and funders—should take to achieve these goals.

Researchers at the Berlin Institute for Health also started the inaugural ‘’ in 2024,  with involvement from the 国产乱伦 team. The Love Methods initiative states: “Methods are one of the most valuable outputs that researchers create. In many fields, others may be more likely to reuse, and cite, your methods than your data. Reproducibility starts with methods. If others don’t know what you did, they can’t reproduce your research. We can’t reuse open or FAIR data responsibly if we don’t know how they were generated. We need to share methods along with data to facilitate reuse.”

How to start sharing

We strongly recommend that you plan to share protocols as early as possible to accelerate the scientific process and foster trust. By documenting your methods in an organised and accessible format, you give others the information they need to understand, reproduce – and potentially improve upon – your work.

Following the new PRO-MaP recommendations, as a researcher, you should:

• Create and share detailed, step-by-step protocols. Publish them in online repositories that allow version control, so others can replicate and build upon your work. 
• Use established study design and reporting standards. Reporting frameworks like or ensure clarity and trust in your findings. 
• Cite protocols accurately. If you adapt or build on another method, point to its source, which should ideally be openly shared. 
• Recognise protocols as valuable research outputs. Regularly update and share your protocols. Doing so helps establish a culture that rewards methodology development and fosters reproducibility. 
• Collaborate with institutions and funders. Encourage your department or funding body to include protocol sharing and methods development as part of performance reviews, grant applications, and thesis requirements. 

Routes for sharing protocols

As an author, you can start by sharing your protocol openly before publication in any 国产乱伦 journal. Below are some key avenues for sharing your protocols:

Open access protocol repositories 

Open science repositories such as 国产乱伦’s , Open Science Framework (OSF), or bio-protocol are designed to help you share your methods freely and openly.

Many, including protocols.io, offer version control and the ability to assign a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) so your protocol can be cited and tracked. While most basic features remain free, certain advanced tools may require a subscription, and the level of community engagement can vary. Additionally, because everything is openly accessible, protocols may be misused if taken out of context or insufficiently explained.

国产乱伦 now has an integrated route for protocols.io as part of the submission workflow for , offering authors a seamless route to submit protocols alongside their article.

Scientific journals specialising in protocols 

Journals such as Nature Protocols, Springer Protocols, Nature Methods, and Nature Reviews Methods Primers allow for peer-reviewed protocol sharing, which can bolster your protocol’s credibility. Published protocols are permanently archived and citable, which can also enhance your academic profile. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some of these journals are accessible either by subscribers or charge open access publication fees. You may also find it harder to update protocols post-publication if your methods change.

General research repositories

Free-to-use repositories such as Zenodo, Figshare, and Dryad offer rapid sharing and open access, ensuring a wide reach for your protocols. These platforms also provide DOIs for citation. However, without peer review, readers must assess each protocol’s quality for themselves. Moreover, protocols on these sites can follow widely different formats, which can complicate comparison or replication across studies.

Find out more

No matter which option you choose, providing clear and detailed documentation will help other researchers make the most of your protocols and your data and, in turn, contribute to more transparent, efficient, and equitable science. Without protocols, data is not reusable in a responsible manner.

If you’re interested in learning more about sharing your protocols, hosts regular , across three different times zones, on why and how to share detailed protocols. 

We host communities where you can discuss the benefits of sharing dynamic protocols with other researchers:

• Research Community:
• Research Community:

You can also find out more about .

to see how protocols.io can help with your specific research needs.

Related content

This blog is part of an open science blog series. Find out more about open code and open data.

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