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Galaxy and the FAIR principles

Galaxy’s FAIR Pages: A New Resource for FAIR Research

Marie Josse , Yvan Le Bras
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Galaxy’s FAIR Pages: Empowering FAIR Research with Galaxy

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Galaxy’s new FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) pages! These pages provide a comprehensive overview of how Galaxy operationalises the FAIR principles to support transparent, reproducible, and collaborative research.

Why FAIR Matters in Galaxy

The FAIR principles are at the heart of modern data-driven research, ensuring that research objects—such as tools, workflows, and datasets—are discoverable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Galaxy has long been promoting these principles, and our new FAIR pages highlight how we embed them into every aspect of the platform.

From persistent identifiers and structured metadata to programmatic access and community-driven standards, Galaxy provides researchers with the tools they need to conduct FAIR-compliant science. These pages are designed to help users understand how Galaxy supports each FAIR principle and how they can leverage these features in their own work.

What’s Included?

Our new FAIR pages cover the following key areas:

🔍 Findability

Galaxy ensures that research objects are easily discoverable through:

  • Persistent and unique identifiers for tools, workflows, and datasets.
  • Rich, structured metadata (e.g., EDAM ontology annotations).
  • Integration with external registries (like WorkflowHub, Dockstore, and ELIXIR’s bio.tools).
  • Providing tools and workflows facilitating the production of rich metadata

🔓 Accessibility

Galaxy lowers barriers to access by supporting:

  • Open-source design and flexible deployment (e.g., public instances, subdomains, and labs).
  • Integration with global data repositories (e.g., ENA, Zenodo, NCBI) and user-defined storage (e.g., AWS, Google Drive, Dropbox) via BYOD (Bring Your Own Data).
  • Multiple authentication methods, including federated identity providers like EGI Check-in.

🔗 Interoperability

Galaxy promotes interoperability through:

  • Adoption of community standards (e.g., GA4GH DRS, RO-Crate, EDAM).
  • Integration with ELIXIR’s interoperability frameworks and EOSC services.
  • API-driven access to tools, workflows, and datasets.

♻️ Reusability

Galaxy enables long-term reusability by:

  • Preserving tool versions and provenance records for reproducible analyses.
  • Supporting containerisation (e.g., Conda, Docker, Singularity) for portable, executable workflows.
  • Providing training and quality assurance through the Galaxy Training Network (GTN) and the Intergalactic Workflow Commission (IWC).

Acknowledging Our Partners

This initiative would not have been possible without the support and collaboration of our partners. We are particularly grateful to:

  • The Galaxy Community for their passion, contributions, and collaborative spirit. The Galaxy Community’s dedication to open science, training, and tool development has been the driving force behind Galaxy’s success as a platform for reproducible and accessible research.

  • GAIA Data logo GAIA-Data for their contributions to the Galaxy platform and their work on these FAIR pages.

  • ELIXIR RIR logo ELIXIR for their support in promoting FAIR data practices and interoperability standards across the life sciences. Galaxy is proud to be a Recommended Interoperability Resource (RIR) for ELIXIR.

How to Use These Pages

Whether you’re a researcher, educator, or data steward, these pages will help you:

  • Understand how Galaxy implements and supports the FAIR principles.
  • Learn best practices for making your research FAIR-compliant.
  • Discover tools and features to enhance the reproducibility and reusability of your work.

👉 Explore Galaxy’s FAIR Pages Here

Get Involved!

We invite the community to explore, use, and contribute to these resources. If you have feedback, suggestions, or would like to collaborate on further FAIR initiatives, we’d love to hear from you!