The Foundation for Open Research (FOR) creates and maintains the Interoperable Computational Tool (ICT) Specification.
All documentation related to the ICT specification can be found below:
- Specification
- Tool Packaging Guidelines
- Best Practices
- Code of Conduct [TODO]
- Roadmap [TODO]
The ecosystem and nature of scientific inquiry has gone through remarkable changes as we have transitioned fully into the Information Age. Our capabilities to generate and share new data in nearly all domains of science have grown exponentially, leading to a multi-disciplinary shift to data science and informatics. Scientists and researchers have more tools than ever at their disposal especially in the last decade, as machine learning algorithms and deep learning networks have grown from abstract computer science projects to cutting-edge real-world applications. But as our toolbox grows, new problems and issues begin to arise -- how can we share these tools? how do we use them? how do we combine them?
These problems are not new to the scientific community. Similar questions have been raised about dissemination and reusability of datasets and many efforts have been made to standardize and develop new solutions. Data science tools share many of the same problems, but with addtional layers of complexity. The FAIR principles, a guideline for resolving dataset reusability issues, share enough similiarities to serve as a guideline and model, but fail to explicitly address many of the issues faced by users trying to share, find, and use analysis tools.
All development and documentation regarding the ICT specification is maintained in GitHub. Contributors are encouraged to use the Issues tab to report bugs, request new features, or facilitate discussions.
The specification and code is licensed under the MIT license.