Galaxy and Research data management
Galaxy is mainly seen as a platform dedicated to data analysis. But in fact, allowing communities to have easy access to reproducible tools (classical or interactive) open the door to use source codes dedicated to other steps of the research project lifecycle, as data management.
This page focusses on the core element of FAIR principles: Metadata!
From data anlaysis to {meta}data management
Brief description of the function of Galaxy as a resource to facilitate {meta}data management
{meta}data management is often seen on the Galaxy side through multiple Galaxy tools and functionnalities allowing to access / retrieve external data. The ELIXIR imlementation study "Strengthen Data Management in Galaxy" was paving a way to go further and notably proposing ways, through Galaxy tools, to help creating metadata standards, convert from one metadata standard to another and finally having assessment of the FAIRness of resulting metadata.
Thus, notably through the Galaxy-E , for Ecology, initiative and thanks to funding from french fund on open science, several tools where added to Galaxy Europe server, showing all the interest to mobilize Galaxy functionnalities to help researchers manage their data through a better and standardized description of their data!
Particular advantages of Galaxy regarding {meta}data management tasks
Main first issue regarding creation of metadata content is the knowledge of the aimed standard and capacity to create the file format, often XML or JSON. That's why, PNDB french biodiversity infrastructure was focusing, through the openmetapaper project, to the creation of tools to facilitate creation of standardized metadata hiding the complexity of both the metadata language and the file format. A third limitation is also represented through the fact that creating rich metadata is often impossible if users are not using programming language to use dedicated R packages or Python libraries. Here notably Galaxy adressed a first challenge, allowing users using such functioannlities without having any programming skills.