Edit an Existing ISA-JSON compliant Study

To edit an existing ISA-JSON compliant Study, the user must have Edit or Manage permissions.

Steps to edit

Navigate to the Study;
Click Actions → Edit ISA Study in the top-right corner.

Note: Users are not notified of changes made to the Study — inform collaborators as needed.

Modifying Study properties

Users with appropriate permissions may update the following properties:

Title: The name used to identify the Study
Description: A summary describing the purpose or scope
Associated Assets: Including SOPs, Publications, and Documents.

Changes are applied immediately upon saving and do not affect existing samples or their metadata.

Modifying Study Sample Types’ attributes

Each ISA-JSON compliant Study contains two ‘Sample Types’, namely a Study Source and a Study Sample. Both consist of a list of metadata attributes used to describe its samples. Attributes may be:

Inherited from an Experiment Sample Template
Defined locally within the Study.

The ‘Overview’ tab of the Study displays the associated Experiment Sample Templates and indicates which attributes are inherited.

Adding an attribute

Click the green ‘Add new attribute’ button at the bottom of the attributes table
Provide the following:
- Name (must be unique)
- Required (toggle on/off)
- Title (toggle on/off)
- Attribute Type (e.g., Text, Number, Date, Controlled Vocabulary)
- Description, PID, Unit (optional)
Click ‘Update’ to apply changes.

Note: If the Study Source or Study Sample already contains samples, new attributes must be created as optional. Once all samples have non-empty values for the attribute, it can be marked as mandatory.

Removing an attribute

An attribute can be removed only if:

No samples contain a value for the attribute
The attribute is not inherited from an Experiment Sample Template.

If these conditions are not met, the ‘Remove’ button will not be displayed. To proceed, check the Experiment Sample Template and/or delete the metadata values from all associated samples first.

Editing an attribute

The following rules apply when modifying attributes:

Name, Description, and Unit can be changed at any time
Title status can be toggled only if all samples contain a value for the attribute
Attribute type can be changed only if:
- No samples contain a value for the attribute
- The attribute is not inherited from an Experiment Sample Template
Required flag:
- Changing from mandatory to optional is always allowed
- Changing from optional to mandatory is allowed only if all samples contain a non-empty value
ISA Tag*:
- Cannot be changed for inherited attributes
- Can be freely changed for non-inherited attributes if no samples exist
- If samples exist, the ISA tag can only be changed if no sample contains a value for the attribute.

Note: The ISA tag determines how SEEK labels the attribute when exporting to ISA‑JSON. Setting the correct ISA tag ensures compatibility with downstream ISA-aware tools.

Validation & best practices

Each Study Study/Sample must have exactly one attribute marked as the title
Attribute titles must be unique within the Study Source/Sample
The title attribute cannot be of type Registered Sample Multi
The Study must not be locked.

Troubleshooting & Tips

Missing “Remove” button next to an attribute?
→ Check the attributes of the associated Experiment Sample Template and ensure no samples contain a value for that attribute.
Cannot rename or change type/unit of an attribute? → Check the attributes of the associated Experiment Sample Template and verify that no samples have populated values for that field.
Toggling “Title” status is disabled? → All samples must have a non-empty value for the new title attribute.
Toggling “Required?” status is disabled? → You can only switch to mandatory if all samples already contain a value for the attribute.