Container image (as output)

A reproducibility-supporting container image (Docker, Singularity/Apptainer, OCI) packaging a complete computational environment — operating system, dependencies, software, configuration — deposited in a container registry with a persistent identifier and treated as a citable research output.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Ask about Container image (as output)

Answers are drawn from this dictionary entry and the rest of the CASRAI corpus, with a link to every source.

Answers are AI-generated from CASRAI’s own published pages and can be wrong, so check the linked sources before relying on one; your question is logged without personal data — never sold, never used to train a third-party model — to show us what CASRAI is missing, so please do not type personal or confidential details. How we use this

Container images close the reproducibility gap of dependency hell by capturing the exact environment in which a result was produced. Increasingly accompanied by workflow definitions and code releases. Depositing to Zenodo via a tar export, or registering at BioContainers, gives a DOI for citation.

References

da Veiga Leprevost et al. 2017 ‘BioContainers’ Bioinformatics
Boettiger 2015 ‘An introduction to Docker for reproducible research’ SIGOPS

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Container image (as output)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/container-image-as-output" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/container-image-as-output",
  "name": "Container image (as output)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/container-image-as-output",
  "description": "A reproducibility-supporting container image (Docker, Singularity/Apptainer, OCI) packaging a complete computational environment — operating system, dependencies, software, configuration — deposited in a container registry with a persistent identifier and treated as a citable research output.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-outputs#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/container-image-as-output",
  "sameAs": [
    "Docker image (output)",
    "Singularity image (output)"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:08:00",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Container image (as output)

Ask about Container image (as output)

Worked examples

Looks similar, but isn't

References

Use in your systems