Investigations

The top-level container for a research project in the ISA framework.

What is an investigation?

An investigation represents a research project or programme. It contains one or more studies, and provides the high-level context: title, description, group ownership, visibility, and export metadata.

Investigations map directly to the Investigation object in the ISA data model, making them compatible with ISA-JSON and ISA-Tab export.

Creating an investigation

1. Navigate to Research → Investigations
2. Click New Investigation
3. Fill in the required fields:
   • Group — Which group owns this investigation (determines access)
   • Title — A descriptive name for the research project
   • Description — Summary of the project's goals and scope
4. Optionally set:
   • Visibility — Private, Group, or Public
   • Submission date — When the project was formally submitted
   • Public release date — When the data becomes publicly accessible
   • DOI — If the project has a DOI assigned
   • License — Data license (default: CC-BY-4.0)
5. Click Create

Investigation page

The investigation view page shows:

Main content:

• Cover image — Optional banner image (Leaders/Managers can upload via the sidebar)
• Description — Project summary
• Studies — All studies within this investigation, with a button to create new ones
• Publications — Linked publications with DOI links
• Analysis runs — Computational pipeline runs linked to this investigation's studies
• Comments — Threaded discussion directly on the investigation
• Related discussions — Posts from the group that reference this investigation
• Export toolbar — ISA-Tab, ISA-JSON, ML-Ready (CSV/JSON/ZIP), Data Card (Markdown/JSON), Provenance, Share

Sidebar:

• Details — Visibility, license, DOI, group, submission and release dates
• Statistics — Studies, processes, samples, and publications counts
• FAIR Score — Scoring Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (0-100) with suggestions
• AI-Ready Score — Scoring ML consumability across 8 dimensions (0-100)

Visibility and access

Visibility	Effect
Private	Only members of the owning group can see this investigation
Group	Members of the owning group and any associated facility groups can see it
Public	Visible on the Explore page to anyone, including non-logged-in visitors

Cover images

Each investigation can have a cover image displayed at the top of the page and on public discovery cards. To upload:

1. On the investigation page, find the Upload Cover Image form
2. Select a JPEG, PNG, or WebP image (max 2 MB)
3. Click Upload

Use images you have the right to use — your own lab photos, microscopy images, or field photos work well.

Exporting investigations

From the investigation page, you can export all metadata in standard formats:

• ISA-JSON — Machine-readable JSON following the ISA 1.0 specification
• ISA-Tab — Tab-separated files compatible with ISA tools

Exports include investigation metadata, all studies, processes, samples, ontology annotations, and protocol references. Files attached to processes are referenced by path but not included in the metadata export.

Sharing investigations

Beyond visibility settings, you can create share links to give specific people access to an investigation without requiring them to join your group:

1. Click the Share button on the investigation page
2. Configure the share link: access level, optional password, expiry date, max views
3. Copy and send the link

Share links can be revoked at any time from My Shares in the user menu.