Content Guidelines

We want scientists worldwide to have open access to the information they need to make smart buying choices, and we'd love to have your help doing that. As a 1DegreeBio community member, you can submit reviews for any reagent or service provider, even those not currently listed on 1DegreeBio.org. We encourage you to share your opinions, both favorable and unfavorable.

Who can create reviews?

Anyone who currently is an active scientist working at the bench can submit a review. All we ask is that you follow a few simple rules.

Tips on writing a great review

When writing a review, consider the types of things you might want to know if you were the one reading the review. A great review includes experimental details and maybe even a couple of helpful tips you learned along the way that might help someone else using the same product.

• Personal experience: We want to know about your firsthand experience with the product or service provider, not what you heard from your colleagues.
• Be specific: Your review should focus on the product and your experience with it. Please do not make overarching statements about the provider, but instead keep locked in on your experience with the product you are reviewing.
• Include the "why": The best reviews include not only whether you were satisfied/not satisfied with the product or service provider, but also why. Any additional details, data or images you can share about your experience is not only incredibly helpful to other 1DegreeBio users, but also rewarded with more than double the 1DB $.
• Be sincere: We welcome your honest opinion about the product – positive or negative. We do not remove reviews because they are critical. We believe all helpful information can inform the buying decisions of other members.
• Full disclosure: If you received a free product from a manufacturer in exchange for your review, please clearly and conspicuously disclose that you received the product free of charge.

Image Guidelines

An image is worth a thousand words so we encourage you to submit one along with your review. This will not only be helpful to users reading your review, but will earn you even more 1DB $. Reviewers must ensure the image they submit accurately represents the original data and is not a misrepresentation. When submitting images, we ask you to follow the guidelines below:

• Axes must be clearly labeled on all graphs.
• No feature in a figure may be enhanced, obscured, or removed.
• Lanes must be clearly labeled when submitting an image of a gel or blot.
• When submitting an image of a gel or blot, we prefer all samples to be shown on one, contiguous gel. In cases where all samples were run on the same gel, but the gel was later cut, the lanes must not be spliced together. Instead, lanes should be divided by a thin line delineating the borders of the gel.
• In order for your image to be helpful to others, full-length gels and blots are ideal. Images cropped just around the band will not be accepted.

Image File Format

• The ideal format for an image is jpeg/jpg.
  Reason: The jpeg image is displayed right away underneath the review. (Hint: A review with this file format is likely to be approved faster.)
• Non-ideal formats: .tiff, .pdf
  Reason: Both .tiff and .pdf files appear as small icons at the bottom of the review. To see the image, you have to click on it. This also opens up another tab/window or downloads a file document, making it difficult to see the entire review all at once. Please send images as .jpeg to make it easier for your fellow scientists to read your review.
• File formats we do not accept: Photoshop, MS Excel
  Reason: Reviews including Photoshop or MS Excel files will not be accepted. Photoshop files are easily manipulated. Please save any Excel graphs in jpeg format.

Policy on Multiple Reviews

Multiple reviews on a single product will only be accepted when:

• The application is different
• The sample tested is different
• The product has been repurchased and used again since your last review

General Considerations

While 1DegreeBio appreciates your time and comments, we reserve the right to remove reviews that include any of the following:

Objectionable material:

• Obscene or distasteful content
• Profanity or spiteful remarks
• Promotion of illegal or immoral conduct

• Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same point excessively (this includes multiple reviews citing similar conditions with similar results)
• Sentiments by or on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product (including copying reviews by other reviewers, websites, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product)
• Reviews written for any form of compensation outside 1DegreeBio's rewards program.

• Other people's material (this includes excessive quoting)
• Phone numbers, postal mailing addresses, and URLs external to 1DegreeBio
• Comments on other reviews visible on the page (because page visibility is subject to change without notice)
• Foreign language content

Messaging Other Reviewers

Ask specific questions. You are more likely to get helpful responses.

Please be respectful when messaging a reviewer. Remember, you are asking the reviewer for a favor. Most people will be happy to spend a few minutes replying to a message in order to provide fellow researchers with helpful information. Do not use this feature to harass or send inappropriate content (including promotional material) to other users.

Protocols

• Details – When submitting a protocol, make sure to include clear instructions. With experience, experimental details and techniques get engrained in our minds and we gradually need less and less detail in our notes. But not everyone following the protocol has the same background. It may help to imagine you are writing the protocol for a new trainee in the lab. Remember to spell out uncommon acronyms and short forms the first time you use them.
• Tips – Include helpful tips wherever possible. For example, “Incubate samples at -20°C overnight. Tip: If results are required sooner, samples may be incubated at -80°C for 1 hour before proceeding to the next step.”
• Sharing material – Make sure you have the right to share the protocol publicly. If not, you can post a link to the resource instead.

Blogs

• Relevance – Please make sure your contributions are relevant and appropriate to the 1DegreeBio audience.
• Inappropriate content – Colorful language and imagery is fine, but threats, harassment, obscenities, spiteful remarks, displays of bigotry, and promotion of illegal or immoral conduct will not be tolerated.
• Promotional content – We generally frown upon promotional content. Let’s keep the site helpful for users and not overrun with commercial noise.