Workflow sharing with automated metadata validation and test execution to improve the reusability of published workflows

Background Many open-source workflow systems have made bioinformatics data analysis procedures portable. Sharing these workflows provides researchers easy access to high-quality analysis methods without the requirement of computational expertise. However, published workflows are not always guaranteed to be reliably reusable. Therefore, a system is needed to lower the cost of sharing workflows in a reusable form. Results We introduce Yevis, a system to build a workflow registry that automatically validates and tests workflows to be published. The validation and test are based on the requirements we defined for a workflow being reusable with confidence. Yevis runs on GitHub and Zenodo and allows workflow hosting without the need of dedicated computing resources. A Yevis registry accepts workflow registration via a GitHub pull request, followed by an automatic validation and test process for the submitted workflow. As a proof of concept, we built a registry using Yevis to host workflows from a community to demonstrate how a workflow can be shared while fulfilling the defined requirements. Conclusions Yevis helps in the building of a workflow registry to share reusable workflows without requiring extensive human resources. By following Yevis’s workflow-sharing procedure, one can operate a registry while satisfying the reusable work-flow criteria. This system is particularly useful to individuals or communities that want to share workflows but lacks the specific technical expertise to build and maintain a workflow registry from scratch.