November 28, 2022
“It’s like a Recipe for Other Researchers”
Vancouver, BC – One of the principles of science is replicability – for a discovery to be considered valid, other researchers must be able to redo the experiment and end up with the exact same results.
In a move to improve research method storage and sharing, Genome British Columbia (Genome BC) has announced that they are partnering with protocols.io to provide premium access for funded researchers to protocols.io, a secure platform for developing and sharing reproducible methods.
With this move, Genome BC becomes the first organization in Canada to adopt protocols.io, a tool, originally funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, that is becoming increasingly popular in international research circles. Being able to incorporate protocols.io into the daily research process will improve efficiencies, ensure transparent and reproducible research and facilitate the publication process.
“Good methodology is like a recipe for other researchers,” says Federica Di Palma, Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President, Research and Innovation at Genome BC. “It should be a step-by-step guide that is clear and easy to follow. By providing access to protocols.io for funded projects in biodiversity, as a first step, Genome BC is making it simple for our researchers to record their standard operating procedures and share them with others to accelerate open and reproducible science and speed up scientific progress.”
Genome BC-supported researchers will receive tailored training from the protocols.io team around best practices for creating reproducible and comprehensive protocols.
CEO and co-founder of protocols.io Lenny Teytelman adds, “We are very much looking forward to supporting Genome BC researchers and warmly welcome this progressive step by Genome BC. It’s fantastic to see a funder recognizing the value of and encouraging researchers to properly document, organize and share detailed methods using protocols.io. If adopted early in the research process, use of protocols.io should not only help with sharing and reporting the methods, but it should be a time-saving efficiency tool that benefits the researchers as they do the work.”
protocols.io supports centralized, secure storage and management of all research method content. Researchers using the platform can record methods as they develop them, dynamically capture tweaks and optimizations as they carry out experiments and with a few clicks can publish their protocol, obtaining a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) link to include in their research articles.
“Incorporating protocols.io into our daily research process will make the process of recording and sharing our research more efficient,” says Steve Jones, Co- Director and Head of Bioinformatics at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, BC Cancer. Jones will be one of the first Genome BC-funded researchers to start using protocols.io. “I see a lot of benefits. It will make it easier for me to collaborate with other researchers, ensure that my work is transparent and reproducible, and it will facilitate the publication process.”
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About Genome British Columbia:
For more than 20 years, Genome BC has generated over $1.27 billion of investment in more than 498 genomics research and innovation projects, including over 1,000 collaborations with partners in BC and internationally. By connecting academic researchers, industry partners, and public policy priorities, Genome BC has brought $969 million in co-funding to BC and advanced 152 BC-based companies. These companies span all key social and economic sectors and address health, environmental, and natural resource challenges, generating social and economic benefits for people throughout BC and Canada. genomebc.ca
About protocols.io
protocols.io was conceived in 2012 by geneticist Lenny Teytelman, and computer scientists Alexei Stoliartchouk and Irina Makkaveeva to facilitate science communication and rapid sharing of knowledge. The protocols.io platform enables academic and industry researchers to record and share detailed up to date methods for research. The company is in Berkeley, California. More information is available at www.protocols.io.
Contact:
Genome British Columba
A.G. Klei, Senior Communications Manager
Mobile: 604-218-0498
Email: media@genomebc.ca
protocols.io
Dr. Emma Ganley, Director of Strategic Initiatives
Email: emma@protocols.io
