GALAXY as a Virtual Research Environment Advancing FAIR Principles

Galaxy is an open-source Virtual Research Environment (VRE) that empowers researchers by enabling reproducible, collaborative, and efficient workflows across disciplines.Designed to align closely with the FAIR principles, Galaxy integrates diverse tools, scalable data storage solutions, and authentication mechanisms, creating an ecosystem that enhances the accessibility and utility of scientific research Complementing Galaxy, platforms like Zenodo play a role in ensuring the findability and reusability of research outputs, such as datasets and workflows, by providing persistent identifiers (DOIs) and rich metadata.

Galaxy enhances the findability of research artifacts by supporting Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for tools and workflows, ensuring long-term discoverability. Its integration with RO-Crate facilitates the packaging and description of data and workflows, enabling cataloging and retrieval. Thus, Galaxy fosters reusability by prioritizing reproducibility and modularity. Researchers can share, clone, and adapt workflows enriched with metadata and version histories, enabling replication of results. Searchable repositories such as the Galaxy Toolshed (the appstore where all the tools are listed) further ensure discoverability, allowing researchers to access shared tools and workflows across domains. These capabilities help scientists locate resources efficiently. Furthermore, its open-source nature further encourages community-driven contributions, ensuring Galaxy’s continuous adaptation to evolving research needs.

Accessibility is an important aspect of Galaxy’s architecture. It provides free access to many publicly available instances and supports integration with scalable cloud and object storage systems like S3, ensuring reliable access to datasets regardless of size. Galaxy’s use of Pulsar, a lightweight distributed computing system, extends computational capabilities by enabling workflows to run across diverse remote resources. Security is enhanced through federated identity management, such as EGI Check-in, which facilitates secure access for users worldwide.

Interoperability is at the heart of Galaxy’s design, achieved through compliance with community-driven standards like CWL (Common Workflow Language) and the Galaxy API, ensuring integration with other platforms. Built-in tools like JupyterLab and remote desktop environments enhance the platform’s capacity to interact with external analytical environments and visualization frameworks. Tool containers leveraging Docker and Singularity ensure portability and reproducibility, allowing workflows to operate across heterogeneous infrastructures.

With a vibrant global community driving its development, Galaxy represents a cutting-edge platform that embodies the FAIR principles. By integrating interoperable tools, scalable storage, robust authentication systems, and collaborative frameworks, Galaxy supports researchers in creating, sharing, and reusing scientific knowledge.