A fundamental feature of science is reproducibility and having study methods and data openly available enables researchers to replicate and verify their results. It is not just making methodologies fully open, they need to be fully documented and placed in a location that is accessible.
Open methodologies are concerned with creating records which detail research plans, rationale and/or hypotheses prior to the commencement of a research study. One of the best ways to increase transparency in research through open methodologies is the use of study protocols. This assures robustness in the scientific method, that a hypothesis and the methods used to prove it are set out before data collection. This avoids the practices of HARKing and p-hacking which see a hypothesis and methodology emerge through data collection to cement a positive result.
A protocol is a full description of the research study and sets out to researchers on the project team the methods which need to be adhered too. As the study gets underway, it can then be used to monitor the study’s progress and evaluate its outcomes. By publishing the protocol publicly, the methods cannot be changed or adapted by what comes out in the data, without the research community being aware of this change. Protocols are being more widely used, especially in clinical trials. In some cases, main funders, such as the MRC are now making it mandatory for study protocols to be made public by the start of the study.
To accommodate the sharing of study protocols, platforms are available for researchers to both deposit and retrieve. These include Octopus, Open Science Framework, clinicaltrials.gov and Protocol.io. The latter is specifically for recording and sharing study protocols. Protocol.io is a secure platform for sharing reproducible methods, enabling researchers to create, publish, and read public protocols. It also allows a research project team or an institution to create their own private workspaces, to share research, SOPs and even teaching materials. However, these additional work spaces come with a cost. By placing protocols on platforms such as these, enables version control, so researchers can link the version used in a given experiment to meet the need for reproducibility.
