SciApps: a cloud-based platform for reproducible bioinformatics workflows.

Motivation: The rapid accumulation of both sequence and phenotype data generated by high-throughput methods has increased the need to store and analyze data on distributed storage and computing systems. Efficient data management across these heterogeneous systems requires a workflow management system to simplify the task of analysis through automation and make large-scale bioinformatics analyses accessible and reproducible. Results: We developed SciApps, a web-based platform for reproducible bioinformatics workflows. The platform is designed to automate the execution of modular Agave apps and support execution of workflows on local clusters or in a cloud. Two workflows, one for association and one for annotation, are provided as exemplar scientific use cases.