Technical Tips Online

Edited by:
  • Mark Patterson
Elsevier. On-line only, free http://tto.trends.com

Web-surfing scientists have a new reason to catch electronic waves. The fully — and solely — on-line journal Technical Tips Online provides quick, easy access to optimal methods for doing what researchers do best: experiments. Two great things about the site: it's free, and it's peer-reviewed. It therefore satisfies every web-surfer's belief that everything on the Internet should be free, and meets the need for high scientific standards for on-line-only resources.

Technical Tips Online is a fusion of a peer-reviewed techniques journal and a methods database. It contains three types of article: peer-reviewed ‘Technical Tips’ (novel methods or major advances on known methods); non-peer-reviewed ‘Protocols’ (editorially invited protocols from laboratories with expertise in the method); and non-peer-reviewed ‘Application Notes’ (company-submitted paid-for reports detailing product use). Editorially selected comments from readers, which are quite fun to read, some with author responses, are also available.

The site is updated fortnightly and is extremely user-friendly. One can browse by category — Polymerase Chain Reaction, Electrophoresis, Microbiology, Purification Methods, Gene Expression, Microscopy, Tissue Culture, and Cloning and Sequencing — or examine only the latest additions. Using its comprehensive search engine is definitely superior to scanning several articles or journals for basic protocols, and then trying to glean modifications in later publications. After a while, however, this site could become equally unwieldy, because it might have to be searched just as extensively to obtain all useful protocol modifications. Given the ease of changing on-line text (which is what makes on-line protocols so appealing), this shouldn't be allowed to occur. Periodic processing of related information by the editors into a single update would increase this site's long-term value.

In this regard, it will be interesting to see how the site develops. Sustaining and properly maintaining any dedicated database is an enormous task, requiring time and money (it is supported by advertisements). All in all, however, if the site is well-maintained and the number of core protocols and useful modifications increases at a rapid rate, this site is well worth a bookmark in my book — er, computer.