v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 1,610 entries across 24 domains · CC-BY 4.01,610 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack CStablev2026.2

Nextflow (concept)

A workflow orchestration system based on dataflow programming with a Groovy-based domain-specific language, designed for scalable, container-native, multi-platform execution of computational pipelines.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
An nf-core/rnaseq pipeline run on AWS Batch using Singularity images.
Is an instance
A custom Nextflow workflow distributed alongside a paper with a pinned configuration profile.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A Snakemake pipeline (different ecosystem).
Not an instance
A non-workflow shell script.

Editorial commentary

Nextflow's processes communicate via typed channels, enabling implicit parallelism and easy scaling from laptop to HPC to cloud. The nf-core community curates dozens of standardised, peer-reviewed pipelines. As with Snakemake, this entry covers the conceptual pattern rather than version-specific behaviour.

References

Di Tommaso et al., 'Nextflow enables reproducible computational workflows' (Nature Biotechnology, 2017); nf-core community publications.

Also known as

Nextflow

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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      vocab-term="Nextflow (concept)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/nextflow-concept" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

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  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:49",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

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