Make protocol accessible in public nests?#155

PRISMA 2020 asks where the protocol is made available if one was prepared. Could the nest protocol be included in the things made public in public nests?

Interesting suggestion! Technically speaking, there’s few barriers to this. I’m guessing @Jeffrey Johnson would agree that from a design perspective, this could be grouped with the PRISMA flow diagram on Synthesis as reporting of methods transparency.

I think the big discussion to have is: is protocol inherently a private information? Should Manuscript (e.g. in a methods section) be used instead? Manuscript is a public piece of information by design. Obviously Protocol is intended to be prospective, whereas Manuscript retrospective, so this distinction isn’t quite right.

I think, in the least, having protocol be optionally included (default not included) in Synthesis could work.

Yes, I think PRISMA and Protocol could be on the same page. I would also think that we could provide a way to toggle the privacy of protocols on and off in the administrator settings? That would allow you to decide on a nest by nest basis.

Protocol is inherently separate from Methods in traditional SR. The protocol is usually more detailed, but the big difference is– you often vary from your protocol and report those changes in Methods. That is why preregistration/PROSPERO is valuable, to say what you set out to do; the Methods SHOULD confirm the protocol in a good review but sometimes changes are necessary. I think PRISMA, full Search terms/history (which is currently not viewable on Synthesis), and Protocol should make up the “Methods” section we previously discussed on Synthesis.

Agreed! We show search phrases (no history) on PRISMA, but agreed we should fully bake a methods section in Synthesis! It would improve transparency.