ISA Model and Serialization Specifications¶
Status: ISA Model and Serialization Specifications 1.0 (28 October 2016)
The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and“OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described byRFC 2119.
The ISA Model and Serialization Specifications are licensed underCC BY-SA 4.0.
The ISA Model and Serialization Specifications are maintained by Susanna-Assunta Sansone[1], Philippe Rocca-Serra[1], AlejandraGonzalez-Beltran[1] and David Johnson[1] on behalf of theISA Community.
| [1] | (1,2,3,4) Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, UK. |
If you wish to make comments regarding these specifications, please see the page onhow to contribute.
Introduction¶
ISA is a metadata framework to manage an increasingly diverse set of life science, environmental and biomedical experiments that employ one or acombination of technologies. Built around theInvestigation (the project context),Study (a unit of research)andAssay (analytical measurements) concepts, ISA helps you to provide richdescriptions of experimental metadata (i.e. sample characteristics, technology and measurement types, sample-to-datarelationships) so that the resulting data and discoveries are reproducible and reusable.
Note
For an introduction to ISA, please read the paper,Towards interoperable bioscience data published inNature Genetics. For more details on the ISA framework and supported tools, please seehttp://www.isa-tools.org
The ISA Model and Serialization Specifications define an Abstract Model of the metadata framework. The ISA Abstract Modelhas been implemented in two format specifications, ISA-Tab and ISA-JSON, both of which have supporting tools andservices associated with them. The format specifications are also available for additional tooling to take advantageof ISA-formatted content.
These specifications are primarily aimed at software engineers to facilitate the development of automated export fromdatabases, or import into analytical or other tools.
Revision History¶
| Version | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 2016-10-28 | Final release of ISA Model and Serialization specifications[2] |
| 1.0 | 2009-01-13 | Final release of ISA-Tab specification[3] |
| 1.0RC1 | 2008-11-26 | First release candidate of ISA-Tab specification[4] |
| [2] | Sansone, Susanna-Assunta, Rocca-Serra, Philippe, Gonzalez-Beltran, Alejandra, Johnson, David & ISA Community. (2016, October 28). ISA Model and Serialization Specifications 1.0. Zenodo.http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.163640 |
| [3] | Rocca-Serra, Philippe, Sansone, Susanna-Assunta, & Brandizi, Marco. (2009, January 13). Specification documentation: ISA-TAB 1.0. Zenodo.http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.161355 |
| [4] | Rocca-Serra, Philippe, Sansone, Susanna-Assunta, & Brandizi, Marco. (2008, November 24). Specification documentation: release candidate 1, ISA-TAB 1.0. Zenodo.http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.161350 |