This is a work-in-progress collection of workflows represented in a FAIR way as nanopublications.
Experimental protocols in life sciences are mainly executed in a manual fashion, by humans. The instructions are executed following an order that is not necessarily lineal. Protocols are often highly nested, with conditionals, loops, full branches and alternative paths that may not always be used --depending on specific conditions, etc. These information artifacts are described in natural language. They are not always easy to follow due to the ambiguity in human expressions --e.g. leave overnight, heat for a few minutes, etc. However, they are paramount in experimental reproducibility, widely used, part of the know-how in an experimental lab, shared within communities of practice and integral part of the documentation required for patenting.
Some use cases are presented here. These should make it easier to extend the current semantic workflow model “PlEx: Plan Executions for FAIR Workflows”, and facilitate the representation of experimental protocols in life sciences.