I think it would be even better if the protocols were stored in some sort of machine parse-able format rather than just human readable text. This solves two pr

I think it would be even better if the protocols were stored in some sort of machine parse-able format rather than just human readable text. This solves two problems a) the big problem of reproducibility in fields like biology, and b) if it's machine-readable, you can just toss the file onto a robot and have the whole procedure done for you. Check out Biocoder for an example of a language for describing protocols: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/india/projects/biocoder/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/india/projects/biocod... Format conversion and outputting versions for publication also follow quite easily once a strict protocol language is defined.