The SimTK web-based project-hosting platform is designed to accelerate the development and dissemination of biosimulation software, models, and data. Its goal is to encourage and enable researchers to share their resources and knowledge. Started in 2005 with ten individuals from Simbios, the NIH-funded center for physics-based simulations of biological structures, SimTK has transformed the biosimulation community. It has enabled its 92,000+ members to fulfill the data sharing responsibilities in their grants with no added cost, find collaborators, develop and build communities around simulation tools, and experiment with new forms of collaborations, like open-source model development. It is an ideal platform to enable the community to maximize its impact on health and biology. SimTK is maintained through Grant R01GM124443 01A1 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
SimTK is forked from FusionForge. It is PHP-based and uses Postgresql as the core database. The code supports many different components important for resource sharing and community building, including:
- UI and back-end for file sharing
- Customized privacy options: Users choose what to share and with whom.
- Automated statistics: The code tracks visits to individual project webpages and file downloads.
- A plethora of tools for sharing and communicating with users: The code allows each project to create its own Subversion repository, wiki, mailing lists, discussion forums, and issue trackers.
- Assignment of DOIs: The code provides an interface for requesting and displaying a permanent identifier (a DOI) for any publicly shared resource. A separate license with a DOI registry, such as EZID, must be obtained to take advantage of this functionality.
- Project recommendations and dissemination: SimTK automatically links individual projects with other projects on the site through the "People also viewed" feature, increasing the visibility of shared work. It also generates an RDF file in the Biositemaps format describing shared resources available on the site. This file can be utilized by other on-line resource indices to further increase the visibility of these resources.
To get additional help with SimTK and this code base, visit https://simtk.org/projects/website.
