Bioinformatics recipes: Creating, executing and distributing reproducible data analysis workflows

Abstract

Background: Bioinformaticians collaborating with life scientists need software that allows them to involve their collaborators in the process of data analysis. Results: We have developed a web application that allows researchers to publish and execute data analysis scripts. Within the platform bioinformaticians are able to deploy data analysis workflows (recipes) that their collaborators can execute via point and click interfaces. The results generated by the recipes are viewable via the web interface and consist of a snapshot of all the commands, printed messages and files that have been generated during the recipe run. A demonstration version of our software is available at https://www.bioinformatics.recipes/. Detailed documentation for the software is available at: https://bioinformatics-recipes.readthedocs.io. The source code for the software is distributed through GitHub at https://github.com/ialbert/biostar-central. Conclusions: Our software platform supports collaborative interactions between bioinformaticians and life scientists. The software is presented via a web application that provides a high utility and user-friendly approach for conducting reproducible research. The recipes developed and shared through the web application are generic, with broad applicability and may be downloaded and executed on other computing platforms.