Whether you are looking to validate an experimental protocol used in your lab or to master a new technique, the following three resources can help you locate research protocols, techniques, and methods to meet your needs.
1. The Protocols tab in the search.HSLS.MolBio search box
The library subscribes to a number of experimental protocol resources including Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, Current Protocols, Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), and SpringerProtocols.
Click on the Protocols tab in the search.HSLS.MolBio search box to quickly search all these resources at once. Results are clustered by major topics based on the query with the option to “remix” the search results to see more subtle topics that did not appear the first time.
2. The Protocol Exchange from Nature Protocols
“The Protocol Exchange is an open repository for the deposition and sharing of protocols for scientific research.” Nearly 3,000 protocols are in the exchange. Recent titles include: A Protocol for Live Imaging of Pancreatic Tissue and Re-Using Plastic Cassettes for Vertical Gel Electrophoresis.
Protocols can be browsed by subjects such as cell biology, imaging, and neuroscience, and then further refined with a keyword search. Note: the protocols listed as “Community Contributed” have not been peer reviewed.
3. PMC Advanced Search Builder
PubMed Central® is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine. In the Advanced Search Builder you can limit a search to the methods/materials section of an article. This ensures that only articles that actually used a technique, procedure, or instrument in the experiment will be retrieved, and not articles that just refer to the technique.
For assistance in locating research protocols, techniques, and methods, contact your liaison librarian or Ask a Librarian.
~Melissa Ratajeski