Reproducible research is a fundamental responsibility of scientists, but the best practices for achieving it are not established in computational biology. The Synapse “Provenance” system is one of many solutions you can use to make your work reproducible by you and others.
Overview of Synapse Provenance
Provenance is a concept describing the origin of something; in Synapse it is used to describe the connections between workflow steps that derive a particular file of results. Data analysis often involves multiple steps to go from a raw data file to a finished analysis. Synapse’s provenance tools allow users to keep track of each step involved in an analysis and share those steps with other users.
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The model Synapse uses for provenance is based on the W3C provenance spec where items are derived from an activity which has components that were used and components that were executed. Think of the used items as input files and executed items as software or code. Both used and executed items can reside in Synapse or in URLs such as a link to a GitHub commit or a link to a specific version of a software tool.
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