Tools RRID? What is this?

RRIDs for software tools and databases, which do not always have a paper about them, are often suggested by SciScore, please verify that the tools listed are what was used and include the RRID in your paper. For shared facilities within your university, RRIDs are a great way to track their use. Please use RRIDs in the methods section or in the acknowledgement section.

RRID portal link https://rrid.site -> tools -> search

RRIDs are unique identifiers for software and other tools include these types:

  • statistical and other software (SPSS)

  • core facilities

  • capital instruments (Illumina sequencer)

  • academic databases (ModelDB, SPARC.science, ODC-Sci etc.)

  • tissue banks (brainbank)

  • large data projects (BICCN.org)

The RRID initiative is led by community repositories that provide persistent, unique identifiers to their resources, such as transgenic mice, salamanders, antibodies, cell lines, plasmids and software projects such as statistical software. RRIDs are described on the rrids.org website and in a primer by Bandrowski and Martone in 2016.

RRIDs are unique numbers that resolve to a particular database record, for example, the RRID:SCR_015820 resolves to this record for the Brain Initiative Cell Census Network: https://scicrunch.org/resolver/SCR_015820

Potential problems with SciScore recognition

SciScore recognized the wrong resource, STAR aligner, but I am just using the STAR Methods table. What can I do??

Please do not add erroneous RRIDs just because they may be suggested by SciScore. Adding accurate RRIDs for the tools used in your study is the goal of this tool and the RRID initiative. One problem is that resources such as STAR, SPARC or even ModelDB are ambiguous as there are multiple resources with those names. For ModelDB there are at least two databases of models! Please choose the correct one and use that RRID.

Including a STAR table in your manuscript is a good way to clearly identify all reagents used in your study. SciScore reads STAR tables so don’t forget to submit the table with your methods section.