A tool information profile is a JSON document which specifies which tool attributes - defined in biotoolsSchema and also listed in the file tool_attributes.json - should be specified for different types of tools within a set of tool descriptions.
Within a profile, biotoolsSchema attributes may be specified for different tool types as:
- Mandatory - the attribute MUST be defined
- Recommended - the attribute SHOULD be defined
- Optional - the attribute MAY be defined
- Not applicable - the attribute is not relevant to this tool set and MUST NOT be defined.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", and "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119:
- "MUST" means that the guideline is an absolute requirement of the specification.
- "MUST NOT" mean that the guideline is an absolute prohibition of the specification.
- "SHOULD" mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular guideline, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before doing so.
- "MAY mean that the guideline is truly optional; you can choose to follow it or not.
Tool information profiles MUST comply with the Tool Information Profile Schema (a JSON schema), which supports all of the biotoolsSchema attributes.
An information graphic derived from the IFB Tool Information Profile is shown below:
We anticipate the tool information profiles will be used by a tool description verification service which will provide a sustainable method for reporting on tool description quality within a corpus of tools.
It will take as input 1) a list of bio.tools tool IDs and 2) a tool information profile, and produce as output a report on the compliance of the tool descriptions to the standard, in human and machine-readable formats. Tool descriptions will be consumed in JSON or JSON-LD format, e.g. by invoking the bio.tools API, or from a bio.tools data dump.
Comprehensive documentation is available:
- Technical docs (built from files under /stable/docs)
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| toolInfoProfileSchema_dev.json | Tool Information Profile Schema - dev version (JSON schema) |
| stable | Current stable version of the schema + docs |
| stable/examples | Example Tool Information Profiles created using the schema (latest stable version) |
| docs | Technical docs formatted for website (latest stable version). Hosted here (uses files copied from "stable" folder) |
| versions | Older stable versions of the schema + docs |
| profiles | Tool Information Profiles created thus far |
| toolAttributesSchema.json | JSON schema for the tool attributes JSON file |
| tool_attributes.json | Lits of attributes defined in biotoolsSchema in JSON format |
| tool_attributes_WITH_REGEX.json | Version of tool_attributes.json with regex patterns (ignore for now) |
| assets | Folder for images and other assets |
| README.md | This file |