In this study we developed methods to extract and aggregate synthesis protocols in a uniform format. We studied 1600 synthesis protocols of ZIF-8 and related materials from 3197 original articles, performing an automated meta-analysis of the synthesis methods contained. We analysed the chemical identities used alongside quantities and reaction conditions to provide a systematic design space for ZIF-8, identifying key trends in the approaches used. Finally, we group similar synthesis protocols together with unsupervised clustering techniques, identifying hidden patterns in the data.