[International Journal of Surgery: Protocols Scientific and clinical discovery is dependent on asking the right research questions, robust methodology capable of answering them, execution and reporting. All too often this isn't done and hence journals have high rejection rates. By having external and independent feedback through peer-review early in the scientific journey, authors can produce higher quality work and focus finite resources.The surgical community needs to know what works and what doesn't work in order to drive research in the correct direction, aid collaboration, prevent duplication and wasted resources. Other issues our community grapples with, is underpowered studies, poor statistical methods, poor reproducibility and external validity, poor methodology and reporting of studies. Publishing Protocols brings the focus away from the results themselves to the research questions, the hypothesis and the robustness of the methodology used to investigate it.IJS Protocols is the first peer-reviewed, international, open access journal seeking to publish research protocols across across the full breadth of the surgical field. We aim to provide rapid submission to decision times whilst maintaining a high quality peer-review process.]