Detailed product citations help the research community in two ways. Firstly, they make it easy for other scientists to procure the same reagents in order to reproduce the results themselves. Secondly, they act as independent validation that a reagent works in a particular application and with samples derived from a particular species.
Despite this, a recent study found that 54% of resources are not uniquely identifiable in publications, regardless of domain, journal impact, or reporting requirements.1 This makes it difficult for other scientists to repeat successful protocols and to expand upon published research, while also limiting the amount of independent product validation data available.
Below, we have outlined the 3 key components needed to properly cite antibodies.2
Anyone reading your paper should be able to clearly understand where the antibody came from so that they can obtain it for their own studies. To identify a commercial antibody, you need to include:
Antibodies obtained directly from an academic lab should provide:
The Research Resource Identification (RRID) scheme is an independent database for research materials, including antibodies, in which each reagent is given a unique identifier (an RRID). This is worth including to improve transparency and facilitate researchers finding the same antibody.
It should be clear in the Materials and Methods section of your paper which applications an antibody was used for, and which species it was used with. This is particularly important if you have performed multiple different types of experiment on several different species to resolve any confusion a reader might have.
The final step is to show that a particular antibody has been validated,3 meaning that it is specific for the intended target protein. This can be done by either citing published work that has validated an antibody, or by performing your own validation and including it within the Materials and Methods section of your paper.
One useful resource is the F1000 Antibody Validation Collection, in which researchers can publish their (positive or negative) antibody validations.
Bringing together the above three steps is all that is needed to properly cite an antibody. Some examples of how this might look for two of our antibodies are given below, but there are many ways to include the relevant information.
When citing published work that has validated an antibody:
Western blotting was carried out on mouse Neuro-2A cell lysates using the following antibodies: rabbit anti-DUSP4 (Antibodies.com, A95892, Lot: #24219), as validated in [Reference A]…
Or referring to your own validation:
Primary antibody incubation for immunohistochemistry was carried out overnight at 4 °C on mouse hippocampal sections using the following antibodies: chicken anti-Calretinin (Antibodies.com, A104312, Lot: #39302), validated against calretinin knockout cells (Supp Fig. 1a)…