Semantic spreadsheet templates

RightField enabled sheets allow rich semantic descriptions of data. Our Just Enough Results Model (JERM) can be used with Rightfield.

RightField is a tool we created for FAIRDOM-SEEK, but is also attracting interest from other disciplines. RightField is an open-source tool for adding ontology term selection to Excel spreadsheets. For each annotation field, RightField can specify a range of allowed terms from a chosen ontology (subclasses, individuals or combinations). The resulting spreadsheet presents these terms to the users as a simple drop-down list. This reduces the adoption barrier for using community ontologies as the annotation is made by the scientist that generated the data rather than a third party, and the annotation is collected at the time of data collection.

Rightfield coversheets can be used in conjunction with any data files to ensure that the right metadata is used to describe the data. It has a special use in our samples framework, with all samples sheets coming with a coversheet with JERM ontology information embedded. Users can create their metadata cover-sheets too..

FAIRDOM-SEEK supports automatic extraction from these templates, after they have been filled out and use, to make adding data to FAIRDOM-SEEK and describing it easier, and also enhance the ability to discover data.