ObjTables: Structured Spreadsheets That Promote Data Quality, Reuse, and Integration

A central challenge in science is to understand how systems behaviors emergefrom complex networks. This often requires aggregating, reusing, andintegrating heterogeneous information. Supplementary spreadsheets to articlesare a key data source. Spreadsheets are popular because they are easy to readand write. However, spreadsheets are often difficult to reanalyze because theycapture data ad hoc without schemas that define the objects, relationships, andattributes that they represent. To help researchers reuse and composespreadsheets, we developed ObjTables, a toolkit that makes spreadsheets human-and machine-readable by combining spreadsheets with schemas and anobject-relational mapping system. ObjTables includes a format for schemas;markup for indicating the class and attribute represented by each spreadsheetand column; numerous data types for scientific information; and high-levelsoftware for using schemas to read, write, validate, compare, merge, revision,and analyze spreadsheets. By making spreadsheets easier to reuse, ObjTablescould enable unprecedented secondary meta-analyses. By making it easy to buildnew formats and associated software for new types of data, ObjTables can alsoaccelerate emerging scientific fields.