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Why is resource identification important?

Have you ever had to look for ages to find that antibody that worked so perfectly in that study you read? Or worse, have you ever come to the conclusion that the amazing antibody did not actually label the protein it was supposed to? More and more scientists are convinced that in order to make science more reproducible, antibodies and other lab resources should be easy to identify. Tracking resources with globally unique accession numbers (similar to a Genbank ID),  aids trouble shooting when experiments don’t work, makes it easy to track all papers that used a certain antibody when that antibody turns out to be faulty, and can help researchers design experiments with resources that have a record of working well in similar studies.

F1000Research already encourages authors to provide a detailed description of their methods and the resources they use, such as catalogue numbers, vendors and, where relevant, concentrations and dilutions. To make these resources universally identifiable, we will be participating in the Resource Identification Initiative pilot during the month of February.

What is the Resource Identification Initiative?

The Resource Identification Initiative is a pilot project that was started by the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) and is designed to encourage authors to provide unambiguous identification of three types of research resources (antibodies, model organisms and software tools) used in their research by adding a globally unique accession number to the resources described in the Materials and methods section of their manuscript. Several publishers, including Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley will participate in this pilot project.

What will participation in the Resource Identification pilot project involve?

In February, when authors submit a Research Article to F1000Research, they will be invited to participate in the pilot project. Authors will be asked to add vendor information, a catalogue number and a Research Resource Identifier (RRID) to all antibodies, model organisms and software tools mentioned in the Materials and methods section of their manuscript. All RRID numbers can be found in a single portal (https://scicrunch.com/resources). A typical antibody citation will look like this: “Sections were stained with a rabbit polyclonal antibody against ERK1 (Abgent, Cat# AP7251E, RRID: AB_2140114)”.

Participation in this pilot study is voluntary and not a condition of publication by F1000Research. After the manuscript has been published, authors will be invited to complete a short online survey, where they can give feedback on how easy, or difficult it was to add this information into their manuscript.

By supporting the Resource Identification Initiative, F1000Research and the participating authors hope to encourage scientists to share information on their lab resources openly, and make it easier for researchers to find studies using similar resources. This will contribute to increasing the reproducibility and reliability of scientific articles, benefitting everyone with an interest in science.