Abstract
The rising popularity of computational workflows is driven by the need for repetitive and scalable data processing, sharing of processing know-how, and transparent methods. As both combined records of analysis and descriptions of processing steps, workflows should be reproducible, reusable, adaptable, and available. Workflow sharing presents opportunities to reduce unnecessary reinvention, promote reuse, increase access to best practice analyses for non-experts, and increase productivity. In reality, workflows are scattered and difficult to find, in part due to the diversity of available workflow engines and ecosystems, and because workflow sharing is not yet part of research practice. WorkflowHub provides a unified registry for all computational workflows that links to community repositories, and supports both the workflow lifecycle and making workflows findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). By interoperating with diverse platforms, services, and external registries, WorkflowHub adds value by supporting workflow sharing, explicitly assigning credit, enhancing FAIRness, and promoting workflows as scholarly artefacts. The registry has a global reach, with hundreds of research organisations involved, and more than 800 workflows registered.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 837 |
| Journal | Scientific Data |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2025 |
Funding
The authors acknowledge the contributions of the WorkflowHub community ( https://about.workflowhub.eu/project/acknowledgements/ ), and are grateful to Sehrish Kanwal of the University of Melbourne for feedback and suggestions about the draft, and are grateful to Xenia Perez-Sitja for helping to create Figure 1. The authors would also like to thank the following individuals for their contributions to WorkflowHub: Bert Droesbeke, Timothy Booth, Alan Williams, Eli Chadwick, Rafael Buono, Helena Roche, Florian Hoedt, Paul Brack, Simon Bray. workflowhub.eu was founded as part of EOSC-Life (WP2 Tools Collaboratory), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreement H2020-INFRAEOSC-2018-2 824087. This work was further supported by funding from European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee: EuroScienceGateway (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-04 101057388, UKRI 10038963), BY-COVID (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EMERGENCY-01 101046203), FAIR-IMPACT (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 101057344, UKRI 10038992), BioDT (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01-01 101057437, UKRI 10038930), PREP-IBISBA (H2020-INFRADEV-2019-2 871118), AgroServ (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-02 101058020, UKRI 10038927), BIOINDUSTRY 4.0 (HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01 101094287, UKRI 10048146). This work is supported by Australian BioCommons which is enabled by NCRIS via Bioplatforms Australia funding. This work is also funded by the Sardinian Regional Government through the XData Project, and by the LIFEMAP project (Italian Ministry of Health, POS T3). The work supported by the ELIXIR-DE node was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF grant 031 A538A de.NBI-RBC and the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg (MWK) within the framework of LIBIS/de.NBI Freiburg. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( https://www.energy.gov/doe-public-access-plan ). The authors acknowledge the contributions of the WorkflowHub community (https://about.workflowhub.eu/project/acknowledgements/), and are grateful to Sehrish Kanwal of the University of Melbourne for feedback and suggestions about the draft, and are grateful to Xenia Perez-Sitja for helping to create Figure 1. The authors would also like to thank the following individuals for their contributions to WorkflowHub: Bert Droesbeke, Timothy Booth, Alan Williams, Eli Chadwick, Rafael Buono, Helena Roche, Florian Hoedt, Paul Brack, Simon Bray. workflowhub.eu was founded as part of EOSC-Life (WP2 Tools Collaboratory), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme under grant agreement H2020-INFRAEOSC-2018-2 824087. This work was further supported by funding from European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee: EuroScienceGateway (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-04 101057388, UKRI 10038963), BY-COVID (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EMERGENCY-01 101046203), FAIR-IMPACT (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-EOSC-01-05 101057344, UKRI 10038992), BioDT (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01-01 101057437, UKRI 10038930), PREP-IBISBA (H2020-INFRADEV-2019-2 871118), AgroServ (HORIZON-INFRA-2021-SERV-01-02 101058020, UKRI 10038927), BIOINDUSTRY 4.0 (HORIZON-INFRA-2022-TECH-01 101094287, UKRI 10048146). This work is supported by Australian BioCommons which is enabled by NCRIS via Bioplatforms Australia funding. This work is also funded by the Sardinian Regional Government through the XData Project, and by the LIFEMAP project (Italian Ministry of Health, POS T3). The work supported by the ELIXIR-DE node was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF grant 031 A538A de.NBI-RBC and the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg (MWK) within the framework of LIBIS/de.NBI Freiburg. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (https://www.energy.gov/doe-public-access-plan).