Main website: http://biocomputeobject.org/
GitHub repository for BioCompute Objects: https://github.com/biocompute-objects/
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and George Washington University (GW) have partnered to establish a framework for community-based standards development and harmonization of HTS computations and data formats. Standardized HTS data processing and data formats will promote interoperability and simplify the verification of bioinformatics protocols. To do this, a schema has been developed to represent instances of computational analysis as a BCO. A BCO includes:
- Information about parameters and versions of the executable programs in a pipeline
- Reference to input and output test data for verification of the pipeline
- A usability domain
- Keywords
- A list of agents involved along with other important metadata, such as their specific contribution
Knowledge of input data is intended to be captured according to existing efforts, including MIRAGE, MIAPE, and STRENDA, and to be in accordance with Minimum Information Standards. In addition to all the information captured in the BCO, the BCO itself must be independent of the execution environment, whether it is a local high-performance or a cloud-based infrastructure.
The BioCompute Objects user guide provides an introduction to implementing/writing a BCO for a pipeline and/or a workflow.
For developers and advanced users, the current BCO specification (v1.2) provides authoritative documentation of the construction of BioCompute Objects.
To reference the BCO standards, please use the following citation inclusive of the DOI:
Simonyan, V., Goecks, J., & Mazumder, R. (2017). Biocompute Objects — A Step towards Evaluation and Validation of Biomedical Scientific Computations. PDA Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, 71(2), 136–146. doi: 10.5731/pdajpst.2016.006734