Springer Nature acquires protocols.io

Springer Nature has acquired protocols.io - a secure platform for developing and sharing reproducible methods. 

Scientific advancement depends on data credibility and work that can be verified, built upon and reproduced. Sharing  all elements of research, including data, methods and materials, and even negative results, makes research more  efficient, enables reproducibility and therefore builds trust in science. Studies show that lack of awareness of existing work or negative results leads to unnecessary duplication and could waste up to €26 billion in Europe alone. 

By laying out detailed step-by-step instructions for research methods, aiming to standardise the process, ensure accuracy of results and enabling research to be reproduced, protocols have a vital role to play in addressing this. With protocols.io joining Springer Nature’s leading protocol offering, researchers will now have the option to make their protocols openly available on the protocols.io platform (fully OA)  as well as publishing them in peer-reviewed publications (searchable via the Springer Nature Experiments). 

Harsh Jegadeesan, Chief Publishing Officer Springer Nature, said: “Springer Nature's commitment to open research shines through with our leadership in open access in all aspects of research, including data, code, and protocols. With protocols.io on board, we're driving forward an open, more reproducible research ecosystem that accelerates solutions to the world´s most urgent challenges.”

Founded in 2012 protocols.io has gained a trusted reputation as an innovator within the protocols and methods space, providing a secure platform for scientific collaboration outside of traditional protocols and methods workflows. Alongside its offering for hosting protocols, researchers also benefit from the ability to write and share methods, within the platform, supporting greater collaboration and enabling more efficient, and effective, workflows. 

Lenny Teytelman, CEO and co-founder of protocols.io, said: “Springer Nature has a long history of innovation and leadership in the area of promoting protocol-sharing and recognition for method development. Our 2021 partnership with Springer Nature underscored a strong alignment and a common vision between our companies in this area. The collaboration also highlighted a shared commitment towards open research and further innovation in protocol sharing. We are very proud to be joining Springer Nature, taking advantage of their expertise and scale in the protocols space, but also now collaboratively building on ways in which we can bring high quality methods to help the research community facilitate discussion, revision, optimization, and reuse. We are excited to expand our offering as part of a global publisher and to continue improving protocols.io, so that scientists and their research can benefit further from access to dynamic and interactive protocols.”