FAIR BioHeaders

Metadata and provenance for reference genomes.

Resources & citation

Specifications, converters, workflows, and citation guidance for the FAIR BioHeaders project.

Close-up of pineapple skin with golden polygonal eyes and green edges
Pineapple close-up · Rhododendrites · CC BY-SA 4.0 · resized, compressed

Patterns across biology

Patterns in fruit

A pineapple’s polygonal eyes create another repeating pattern in nature, with varied shapes arranged across the fruit’s surface.

The DNA connection behind our hexagon

Project repositories

ResourcePurposeStatus
FHR SpecificationReference genome metadata specification and schemasPublished
FHR File ConverterProcessing library and conversion toolsPublished
FHR NextflowWorkflow integrationDemo
FHT SpecificationCompanion FHT specificationDraft
FHT File ConverterCompanion FHT conversion toolsDraft
FHR CitationMaintained citation metadata and BibTeXPublished

Repository citations

Select Cite to view and copy a repository’s BibTeX entry.

Molik, David; Wright, Adam. FHR Specification. Zenodo. 2026.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6762549

Molik, David; Wright, Adam. FHR File Converter. Zenodo. 2026.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6762547

Molik, David; Wright, Adam. FHR Nextflow. 2025.

https://github.com/FAIR-bioHeaders/FHR-Nextflow Development prototype; no published release or DOI.

Molik, David; Wright, Adam. FHT Specification. 2023.

https://github.com/FAIR-bioHeaders/FHT-Specification Draft companion specification for reference transcriptomes.

Molik, David; Wright, Adam. FHT File Converter. 2023.

https://github.com/FAIR-bioHeaders/FHT-File-Converter Draft companion converter for reference transcriptomes.

Molik, David; Wright, Adam. FHR Citation. 2026.

https://github.com/FAIR-bioHeaders/FHR-Citation Maintained citation metadata and BibTeX.

Zenodo community

Browse the FAIR-bioHeaders Zenodo community for archived project outputs. For a specific specification or software release, use the version DOI on its Zenodo record.

Standards & adoption

FHR is referenced in ISO 25184:2026, Molecular biomarker analysis — Nucleotide sequencing — Verified next generation sequences (VNGS) (edition 1, published 2026-04; ISO/TC 34/SC 16). The standard specifies requirements for reference next generation nucleotide sequences, including sequences that are accessible on the semantic web — the same provenance and metadata goals FHR was designed to support.

Citing FHR

For a general description of FHR, cite the published paper. Select Cite to view and copy its BibTeX entry.

Wright, Adam; Wilkinson, Mark D; Mungall, Christopher; Cain, Scott; Richards, Stephen; Sternberg, Paul; Provin, Ellen; Jacobs, Jonathan L; Geib, Scott; Raciti, Daniela; Yook, Karen; Stein, Lincoln; Molik, David C. FAIR Header Reference genome: a TRUSTworthy standard. Briefings in Bioinformatics, 25(3). 2024.

https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbae122

For direct use of the specification or converter, cite the resource in the project repositories list above.

These are concept DOIs, which group releases. For reproducible use of a specific release, select its version DOI from the Zenodo record. See FHR Citation for maintained metadata and downloadable BibTeX.

To assemble a metadata record and a readable table in the browser, use the FHR table builder.