1. Introduction

Networks have become ubiquitous in systems biology. Visualization is a crucial component in their analysis. However, collaborations within research teams in network biology are hampered by software systems that are either specific to a computational algorithm, create visualizations that are not biologically meaningful, or have limited features for sharing networks and visualizations.

We present GraphSpace, a web-based platform that fosters team science by allowing collaborating research groups to easily store, interact with, lay out, and share networks. Users can upload richly-annotated networks, irrespective of the algorithms or software used to generate them. Users can create private groups, invite other users to join groups, and share networks with group members. A user may search for networks for specific attributes and for the presence of a specific node or nodes. A powerful layout editor allows users to efficiently modify node positions, edit node and edge styles, save new layouts, and share them with other users. Users may make networks public and provide a persistent URL in a publication, enabling others to explore these networks. While users can view and interact with GraphSpace networks anonymously, several features become available after a user creates an account and logs in. We describe the main features of GraphSpace in this documentation.

GraphSpace is being developed by T. M. Murali ‘s research group in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.