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A guideline for reporting experimental protocols in life sciences
Publicated to:Peerj. 2018 (5): e4795- - 2018-05-28 2018(5), DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4795
Authors: Giraldo, Olga; Garcia, Alexander; Corcho, Oscar
Affiliations
Abstract
© 2018 Giraldo et al. Experimental protocols are key when planning, performing and publishing research in many disciplines, especially in relation to the reporting of materials and methods. However, they vary in their content, structure and associated data elements. This article presents a guideline for describing key content for reporting experimental protocols in the domain of life sciences, together with the methodology followed in order to develop such guideline. As part of our work, we propose a checklist that contains 17 data elements that we consider fundamental to facilitate the execution of the protocol. These data elements are formally described in the SMART Protocols ontology. By providing guidance for the key content to be reported, we aim (1) to make it easier for authors to report experimental protocols with necessary and sufficient information that allow others to reproduce an experiment, (2) to promote consistency across laboratories by delivering an adaptable set of data elements, and (3) to make it easier for reviewers and editors to measure the quality of submitted manuscripts against an established criteria. Our checklist focuses on the content, what should be included. Rather than advocating a specific format for protocols in life sciences, the checklist includes a full description of the key data elements that facilitate the execution of the protocol.
Keywords
Quality index
Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel
The work has been published in the journal Peerj due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2018, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Miscellaneous).
From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 2.23, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jul 2025)
Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-07-04, the following number of citations:
- WoS: 4
- Scopus: 3
Impact and social visibility
Leadership analysis of institutional authors
This work has been carried out with international collaboration, specifically with researchers from: Austria.
There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: First Author (GIRALDO PASMIN, OLGA XIMENA) and Last Author (CORCHO GARCIA, OSCAR).
the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been GIRALDO PASMIN, OLGA XIMENA.