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Common Workflow Language User Guide

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Metadata and Authorship

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 0 min
Questions

  • How do I provide information for people to cite my tool descriptions?

Objectives

  • Learn how to add authorship information and other metadata to a CWL description.

Implementation extensions not required for correct execution (for example, fields related to GUI presentation) and metadata about the tool or workflow itself (for example, authorship for use in citations) may be provided as additional fields on any object. Such extensions fields must use a namespace prefix listed in the $namespaces section of the document as described in the Schema Salad specification.

For all developers, we recommend the following minimal metadata for your tool and workflows. This example includes metadata allowing others to cite your tool.

metadata_example2.cwl

#!/usr/bin/env cwl-runner
cwlVersion: v1.0
class: CommandLineTool

label: An example tool demonstrating metadata.
doc: Note that this is an example and the metadata is not necessarily consistent.

inputs:
  aligned_sequences:
    type: File
    label: Aligned sequences in BAM format
    format: edam:format_2572
    inputBinding:
      position: 1

baseCommand: [ wc, -l ]

stdout: output.txt

outputs:
  report:
    type: stdout
    format: edam:format_1964
    label: A text file that contains a line count

s:author:
  - class: s:Person
    s:identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6130-1021
    s:email: mailto:dyuen@oicr.on.ca
    s:name: Denis Yuen

s:contributor:
  - class: s:Person
    s:identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7681-6415
    s:email: mailto:briandoconnor@gmail.com
    s:name: Brian O'Connor

s:citation: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3115156.v2
s:codeRepository: https://github.com/common-workflow-language/common-workflow-language
s:dateCreated: "2016-12-13"
s:license: https://spdx.org/licenses/Apache-2.0 

$namespaces:
  s: https://schema.org/
  edam: http://edamontology.org/

$schemas:
 - https://schema.org/docs/schema_org_rdfa.html
 - http://edamontology.org/EDAM_1.18.owl

Extended Example

For those that are highly motivated, it is also possible to annotate your tool with a much larger amount of metadata. This example includes EDAM ontology tags as keywords (allowing the grouping of related tools), hints at hardware requirements in order to use the tool, and a few more metadata fields.

metadata_example3.cwl

#!/usr/bin/env cwl-runner
cwlVersion: v1.0
class: CommandLineTool

label: An example tool demonstrating metadata.
doc: Note that this is an example and the metadata is not necessarily consistent.

hints:
  ResourceRequirement:
    coresMin: 4

inputs:
  aligned_sequences:
    type: File
    label: Aligned sequences in BAM format
    format: edam:format_2572
    inputBinding:
      position: 1

baseCommand: [ wc, -l ]

stdout: output.txt

outputs:
  report:
    type: stdout
    format: edam:format_1964
    label: A text file that contains a line count

s:author:
  - class: s:Person
    s:identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6130-1021
    s:email: mailto:dyuen@oicr.on.ca
    s:name: Denis Yuen

s:contributor:
  - class: s:Person
    s:identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7681-6415
    s:email: mailto:briandoconnor@gmail.com
    s:name: Brian O'Connor

s:citation: https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3115156.v2
s:codeRepository: https://github.com/common-workflow-language/common-workflow-language
s:dateCreated: "2016-12-13"
s:license: https://spdx.org/licenses/Apache-2.0 

s:keywords: edam:topic_0091 , edam:topic_0622
s:programmingLanguage: C

$namespaces:
 s: https://schema.org/
 edam: https://edamontology.org/

$schemas:
 - https://schema.org/docs/schema_org_rdfa.html
 - http://edamontology.org/EDAM_1.18.owl

Key Points

  • Metadata can be provided in CWL descriptions.

  • Developers should provide a minimal amount of authorship information to encourage correct citation.

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