ISA

The ARC builds on the ISA model (Investigation - Study - Assay) for metadata annotation, which aligns well with most projects in biology labs. It allows to group multiple studies and assays to one investigation.

ISA in a nutshell

ISA-Tab for intuitive collection of metadata

The most user-intuitive format of the ISA metadata framework is ISA-Tab. As the name suggest, it’s a tabular format. Hence, you can view the files in a spread-sheet program of choice.

Your ARC has one isa.investigation.xlsx workbook at its root (i.e. every ARC collects the data to one investigation). Each study or assay that you add to your ARC contains one isa.study.xlsx or isa.assay.xlsx, respectively.

Comparison of the ISA file types. Grey cells: keys. White cells: values.

The major difference between the ISA workbooks is their read-direction:

isa.investigation.xlsx is read top-to-bottom (keys on the left, values extending to the right)
isa.study.xlsx and isa.assay.xlsx left-to-right (keys on top, value extending to the bottom)