Tune into Love Methods Week this January! Love Methods Week is all about learning how to share open, reusable methods. It focuses on how research is done, including methods, protocols, and reproducibility. This is a perfect precursor to our next big week of events, Love Data Week in February.
Organized by the Berlin Institute of Health’s QUEST Center for Responsible Research, the week emphasizes that open data alone is not enough—clear, transparent methods are essential for reproducibility and scientific progress. Choose from a series of international workshops focused on improving how research methods are designed, documented, and shared.
Methods are one of the most valuable outputs that researchers create. In many fields, others may be more likely to reuse and cite your methods than your data. We can’t reuse open or FAIR data responsibly if we don’t know how they were generated. We need to share methods along with data to facilitate reuse.
Harvard supports this work through platforms like the Harvard Dataverse, protocols.io, and the Open Science Framework, which help researchers openly share methods and supplementary materials.
In addition to the full slate of events, we’re spotlighting several sessions we believe will be especially valuable for you:
Monday, January 19
- Using the PRO-MaP guidelines to improve the clarity of methods and protocols
- The PRO-MaP guidelines outline actions that researchers can take to improve reporting of methods and reusable step by step protocols in the life sciences.
- RRIDs and your methods - do we need to love our reagents a little more?
- This session will talk about the importance of reagents and resources.
Tuesday, January 20
- From Lab Notes to Lab Protocols
- This workshop will address maintaining a lab notebook and the key elements of compiling a reproducible protocol. Featuring HMS Associate Dean for Research Cores and Technology, Caroline Shamu.
Wednesday, January 21
- Avoiding common pitfalls for a reproducible systematic review and meta-analysis
- Participants will learn practical strategies and tools to improve transparency, enhance reproducibility, and streamline their workflows.
- protocols.io Hackathon: Get Your Protocol Ready to Publish
- Bring your protocol and we will guide you through creating, refining, and sharing it on protocols.io.
Thursday, January 22
- Quarto for Reproducible Manuscripts
- Learn how to incorporate your computational methods, tables and figures into your manuscript using Quarto.
- Methods Mythbusting: Insights from Journal Editors and protocols.io
- protocols.io has teamed up with editors from leading methods journals for an interactive panel on common misconceptions about protocols and methods publishing.
- Reproducibility for Everyone (R4E)
- This workshop will provide specific tips and tools useful in improving daily research workflows.
Friday, January 23
- How to use methodological shortcut citations responsibly
- In this webinar, we’ll discuss how to use methodological shortcut citation responsibly.