Ten simple rules to make computable knowledge shareable and reusable.

Computable biomedical knowledge (CBK) is: "the result of an analytic and/or deliberative process about human health, or affecting human health, that is explicit, and therefore can be represented and reasned upon using logic, formal standards, and mathematical approaches." Representing biomedical knowledge in a machine-interpretable, computable form increases its ability to be discovered, accessed, understood, and deployed. Computable knowledge artifacts can greatly advance the potential for implementation, reproducibility, or extension of the knowledge by users, who may include practitioners, researchers, and learners. Enriching computable knowledge artifacts may help facilitate reuse and translation into practice. Following the examples of 10 Simple Rules papers for scientific code, software, and applications, we present 10 Simple Rules intended to make shared computable knowledge artifacts more useful and reusable. These rules are mainly for researchers and their teams who have decided that sharing their computable knowledge is important, who wish to go beyond simply describing results, algorithms, or models via traditional publication pathways, and who want to both make their research findings more accessible, and to help others use their computable knowledge. These rules are roughly organized into 3 categories: planning, engineering, and documentation. Finally, while many of the following examples are of computable knowledge in biomedical domains, these rules are generalizable to computable knowledge in any research domain. Author summary: Computable biomedical knowledge, including algorithms, models, and evidence, is already impacting—and will likely transform—health research and healthcare delivery. Representing this knowledge in formats that can be discovered and processed by computers increases its potential for use at scale. Similarly, making these algorithms, models, etc. (aka computable knowledge artifacts) understandable and reusable by others can help facilitate reuse and translation into practice. However, as with other types of scientific software or research data, creating artifacts that are usable by and useful to others requires intentionality, and often additional time and effort. We've developed over 100 computable knowledge artifacts in diverse areas of health research and healthcare and we've learned a few things along the way. We've distilled these lessons learned into 10 Simple Rules to help researchers who would like to make their computational research products available and useful to others. Our work centers on knowledge in the biomedical domain, but we believe these 10 Simple Rules are generalizable and valuable as design principles for any researcher wishing to share computational research products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]