In a move to improve research method storage and sharing, Genome British Columbia this week announced that they are partnering with protocols.io to provide access for funded researchers to the protocols.io platform, which was built for developing and sharing reproducible methods.
Protocols.io was originally funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and 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, according to a statement from Genome BC.
“Good methodology is like a recipe for other researchers,” believes Federica Di Palma, Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President of Research and Innovation at Genome BC. “It should be a step-by-step guide that is clear and easy to follow.”
With this move, Genome BC becomes the first organization in Canada to adopt protocols.io.
“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,” stated Di Palma.
Genome BC-supported researchers will receive training from the protocols.io team around best practices for creating reproducible and comprehensive protocols.
“We are very much looking forward to supporting Genome BC researchers and warmly welcome this progressive step by Genome BC,” said protocols.io cofounder Lenny Teytelman. “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.”
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 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, Head of Bioinformatics at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre and one of the first Genome BC-funded researchers to start using protocols.io.
Across more than two decades, Genome BC has generated over $1.27 billion of investment in 500 genomics research and innovation projects, including 1,000 collaborations with partners in BC and internationally.
Genome BC has brought $969 million in co-funding to BC and advanced 152 BC-based companies, which span all key social and economic sectors—from blueberries to grizzly bears to drinking water.
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