Header: Mandatory Annotation database?

[ThomasDesvignes]

It was suggested during the authors' review of the mirGFF3 paper that the mirGFF3 file should have the annotation database used for the initial step of detection, annotation, and quantification as mandatory header.

While this seems absolutely logical for researchers working on well characterized model species or human data, this is impractical for researchers working on non-model organisms for which no database is well maintained or don't even include these species.

Marc Friedländer suggested to specify as mandatory header either "miRBase (with version)", "MirGeneDB (with version)" or "custom".

I think this would be satisfactory for everyone and if an analysis using a 'custom' annotation database get published, then it would be easy to obtain a Github/Zenodo DOI that could be used as a header in addition to the "custom information". Something like: "Custom (DOI:Zenodo....)"

Any opinion on this? Should we make mandatory a header with the annotation database used?

[phillipeloher]

Our aligner is currently using miRCarta 1.1 and miRBase 22.