FAIR in practice: minimum metadata schema for bioinformatics analytics by machines
Daphne Wijnbergen, Núria Queralt-Rosinach, Valérie Barbié, Emma Verkinderen, Nirupama Benis, Annika Jacobsen, Peter A. C. ’t Hoen, Claudio Carta, Marco Roos, Eleni Mina · 2026
Read FAIR in practice: minimum metadata schema for bioinformatics analytics by machines by Daphne Wijnbergen, Núria Queralt-Rosinach, Valérie Barbié, Emma Verkinderen, Nirupama Benis, Annika Jacobsen, Peter A. C. ’t Hoen, Claudio Carta, Marco Roos, Eleni Mina (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13281499.txt.
Description
Daphne Wijnbergen and colleagues proposed a short data card for biology software in a 2026 paper. Global FAIR rules urge that data be easy to find, reach, mix, and reuse. Machines should be able to reuse tools and data on their own. In practice, the labels on datasets and tools are often too thin or too loose for machines. The team asked what the smallest useful set of labels would be.
Their schema covers four jobs for a tool: naming it, picking it, checking it, and running it. Each job gets a small set of fixed fields. The same fields were lined up with dataset labels, so tools and data can pair up smoothly. The authors say platforms that share tools and data can adopt the card as is. Better labels, they argue, would let software run studies with far less human help.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Daphne Wijnbergen, Núria Queralt-Rosinach, Valérie Barbié, Emma Verkinderen, Nirupama Benis, Annika Jacobsen, Peter A. C. ’t Hoen, Claudio Carta, Marco Roos, Eleni Mina |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 34284 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |