protocols.io
Overview
protocols.io is an open-access platform for creating, versioning, sharing, and discovering step-by-step research protocols and methods. Founded in 2014 with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, it provides researchers with a structured editor for building interactive protocols that include reagents, equipment, timing, and embedded media. All publicly shared protocols are assigned DOIs, making them independently citable research outputs. The platform uses a freemium model: an Open Research tier is free for public protocol creation and sharing, while paid institutional and industry plans add private workspaces, team collaboration, HIPAA compliance, and audit trail features. protocols.io was acquired by Springer Nature in 2024 and replaced the Nature Protocol Exchange as the publisher’s primary methods-sharing platform.
Relevance to Neuroscience
protocols.io is domain-agnostic but is widely used in neuroscience. Institutional pilots at UC, Harvard, and BIH QUEST Center have included neuroscience among the primary use cases. The NIH SPARC programme integrates protocols.io for sharing autonomic neuroscience methods. Neuroimaging pipelines such as the MELD cortical surface analysis protocol have been deposited and versioned on the platform. Researchers at the Paris Brain Institute (ICM) use protocols.io to publish computational methods, including ATAC-seq workflows for chromatin accessibility analysis.
Connections
- Aligned with: FAIR Principles
Resources
- https://www.protocols.io
- https://www.protocols.io/about
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002538 (Teytelman et al. 2016, PLOS Biology, original platform description)
- https://www.springernature.com/gp/librarians/products/databases-solutions/protocols-io (Springer Nature acquisition context)
- https://www.protocols.io/view/atac-seq-methods-for-consensus-peak-generation-to-36wgq326olk5/v1 (Coutelier et al. 2025, ICM, ATAC-seq consensus peak generation, example of ICM use)