Research Data Service

protocols.io

An online platform for the creation, management, and sharing of research protocols or methods

The University has a subscription to the protocols.io service and it is available to all staff and students of the University. 

Users of the University subscription can:

protocols.io logo
  • Create new protocols within the system
  • Upload existing methods and digitise them
  • Share protocols between group members and external collaborators
  • Publish protocol(s) making them freely available for others to use and cite or keep them private

Benefits of using protocols.io

  • All protocols are dynamic and interactive, helping with collaboration within a group or among co-authors outside of the university.
  • Those with access to a protocol can then update, annotate, or fork it so that it can be continually improved and developed.
  • Subscribing to the University plan will allow research groups to organise their methods and ensures that knowledge is not lost as trainees graduate and postdoctoral students move on.
  • There is interoperability with GitHub and RSpace, and long-term preservation of protocols through CLOCKSS.
  • There are native iOS and Android mobile apps for running the protocols as a checklist during an experiment, helping to guide the work and record any changes on that day in a lab-notebook fashion.

How to sign up for an account

There is a registration page dedicated to helping you sign up for an University subscription account on the protocols.io site. When you register with your University email address you will receive a Premium Individual account and the rights to set up Premium group accounts.

Register for a University of Edinburgh protocols.io account

More details more about the benefits of a Premium user account

Cost

This service is free for our students and staff.

If the University decides to terminate the subscription individual users from the University of Edinburgh will have the option to pay for the continued individual and team accounts directly. If users do not wish to pay for their own subscription they will continue to have access to their private content but will not be able to create additional private protocols.

Webinars

We have scheduled a series of protocols.io webinars for the 2022-23 academic year, these are open to all staff and students who are interested in learning more about protocols.io and how they can use it to support their research. These webinars will be conducted using Zoom and you will be sent joining instructions once you have booked a place.

Title & Description Date & Time Book

Introduction to protocols.io

Research papers and protocol organization in labs often lack detailed instructions for repeating experiments. protocols.io is an open-access platform for researchers to collaboratively create step-by-step, interactive and dynamic protocols that can be run on mobile or web. Researchers can share protocols with colleagues, collaborators, the research community or make them public, with ease and efficiency. Real-time communication and interaction keep protocols up to date with versioning, forking/copying, Q&A, and troubleshooting. Public protocols receive a DOI and allow open communication with authors and researchers to encourage efficient experimentation and reproducibility.

Join this webinar to learn more about protocols.io and the benefits that come with your Univ of Edinburgh premium account.

This one-hour workshop will include a short introduction from a member of the Univ of Edinburgh and will then go on to cover:

  • Introduction to protocols.io’s mission and key functionality

  • Univ of Edinburgh benefits: setting up your premium account, importing existing protocols

  • How to create, share, and publish your protocols

  • Q&A

26/10/2022

10:00 - 11:00

Book

protocols.io for quantitative data and clinical trials.

Communicate and collaborate effectively with protocols.io. Protocols will never leave the team, even if a person does. With protocols.io it is fast and easy to find the information that you want— a central place for all of your methods and data.

Join us for a webinar to learn about:

How to enter your clinical trial or lab protocols and assign them a DOI; these can be used as the public facing version of record for that protocol. Any changes made can be tracked between versions.

  • Managing quantitative and/or clinical research data and protocols

  • Simplifying teamwork and improving collaboration

  • Saving your team time and keeping work organized with protocols.io

  • Publishing your methods or clinical trial protocols 

  • Activating your UoE account

10/11/2022

14:00 - 15:00

Book

protocols.io for qualitative data, arts, humanities, & social sciences.

protocols.io workspaces operate as a hub for researchers to share their methods, files, documents, and data. This webinar will highlight the key features of the protocols.io and how you can use protocols.io for your work. With protocols.io it is fast and easy to find the information that you want— a central place for all of your methods and data.

Join us for a webinar to learn about:

How to use protocols.io to develop practice collaboratively with contributors and Co-investigators nationally and internationally. protocols.io allows teams to easily build upon and adapt work performed in a national or disciplinary context to new environments or areas of practice.

  • Activating your UoE account

  • Managing research approaches

  • Simplifying teamwork and improving collaboration

  • Saving your team time and keeping work organized with protocols.io

  • Increasing transparency and reproducibility

06/12/2022

14:00 - 15:00

Book

protocols.io: Sharing Methods - Registered Reports and Publishing, and the Importance of Credit for Methods as a Research Output

Developing and tweaking methods is a laborious but often unrewarded effort. Join this webinar to learn more about how to create and maintain reproducible and discoverable research methods, how to post registered reports and publish your methods on protocols.io, and why sharing and publishing protocols is important.

Join us for a webinar to learn about:

Learn how, with protocols.io, you can easily publish your protocols, make them citable and discoverable, and receive credit that is deserved for the methods as a standalone important research output. 

  • Registered reports and making your protocols public

  • Maximize reproducibility and discoverability of your protocols

  • Improve the reliability and impact of your research papers with protocols.io

  • Turn your protocols into peer-reviewed papers

  • Q&A

25/01/2023

13:00 - 14:00

Book

Webinar Archive

Webinar 1 - Introduction of protocols.io to the University of Edinburgh community

The UoE - protocols.io partnership provides the UoE students and staff with free Premium individual and team plans. This webinar gives an introduction to protocols.io and will teach UoE students and faculty how to get started on protocols.io.

https://www.protocols.io/webinars/introduction-of-protocolsio-to-the-university-of-edinburgh 

Webinars 2-4 - College focused protocols.io webinars with discipline specific examples

These three webinars build on the introduction given in Webinar 1 and provide examples relevant to the types of research being done in each of the three colleges.

2 - College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine - https://www.protocols.io/webinars/protocolsio-webinar-for-the-uoe-college-of-medicine1

3 - College of Science and Engineering - https://www.protocols.io/webinars/protocolsio-webinar-for-the-uoe-college-of-science

4 - College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences - https://www.protocols.io/webinars/protocolsio-webinar-for-the-uoe-college-of-arts

Webinar 5 - Utilizing the protocols.io and RSpace integration to improve efficiency in the lab

This is not a UoE specific webinar, but is relevant to anyone wishing to learn more about the benefits of utilizing the RSpace and protocols.io integration and how it can help you to improve your efficiency in the lab.

https://www.protocols.io/webinars/utilizing-the-protocolsio-and-rspace-integration-to