Nextflow and nf-core: Reproducible Workflows for the Scientific Community

Modern biomedical research is data-driven. Advances in sequencing and imaging technologies pose fundamental challenges for the analysis of high throughput data produced by these methods. To address these challenges, scientific workflow managers are proving to be pivotal tools that fulfill the requirements for data analysis and management according to FAIR standards. Released in 2013, Nextflow has become a leading workflow framework. This proposal aims to support the Nextflow project maintainer position, who will support the development of new features including a plugin mechanism, pipeline parameter validation support for SRA Cloud retrieval and SQL databases as well as the dynamic cleanup of temporary files. The nf-core project will greatly benefit from the continuation of its positions through the additional funding cycle, allowing future events to improve community engagement as well as software development and maintenance. This funding will also enable the creation of community materials, including contributing to the Nextflow Software Carpentries course, and the continued diversity and inclusion efforts and the Nextflow community conference.

nf-core is a community effort to collect a curated set of analysis pipelines built using Nextflow. nf-core has three target audiences: facilities, single users and developers. For facilities, it provides highly automated and optimized pipelines that guarantee reproducibility of results for their users. Single users profit from portable, documented and easy-to-use workflows. But users can also become a developer and write their own pipeline in Nextflow using already available templates and helper tools.