GO Tools Registry
Proposal to use NIF registry
The current location of the GO tools registry is: http://www.geneontology.org/GO.tools.shtml
We do not have a replacement curator for the GO tools registry, and the software used to generate the html requires an overhaul.
We propose to offload the registering of GO tools to the NIF registry. The NIF registry is a large catalog of various kinds of resources - originally for neuroscience, but no longer restricted to this purpose. There are professional curators dedicated to registering resources (including computational resources) who can take over this task at no cost to the GO consortium. Many of our tools were already in the NIF registry. As part of a trial project, the GO tools list has been entered into this registry and is available here:
http://neurolex.org/wiki/Category:Resource:Gene_Ontology_Tools
Note that additional metadata has been added by the NIF curators - e.g. grant #s
Example resource: http://neurolex.org/wiki/Category:Resource:Onto-Express
Addition of new resources
GO tool developers can use the neurolex submission system: http://neuinfo.org/cindy.php
Anybody can register a resource or edit pages for existing resources. It is recommended that you create an account and login first. Any edits are provisional until checked by a NIF curator. The NIF registry curator will also fill in missing tools
Note: we may want a special page dedicated to GO tool submitters that help guide them with the forms they are to fill in.
Categories
Currently different types of resources (e.g. "term enrichment") are indicated by keywords.
Querying Tools
It should be possible to query over the tools if we add sufficient metadata. E.g. find all term enrichment tools that are open and use hypergeometric distribution.
Look and feel
Note that as the resource is hosted in neurolex it does not have the same look and feel as the current GO tools pages. If we decide it is important to retain our look and feel we can invest resources to build a web interface that queries the NIF registry. Or we can incorporate the registry page as an iframe (the software group are investigating possibilities).