Twelve years of SAMtools and BCFtools
Background
SAMtools and BCFtools are widely used programs for processing and analysing high-throughput sequencing data. They include tools for file format conversion and manipulation, sorting, querying, statistics, variant calling, and effect analysis amongst other methods.
Findings
The first version appeared online 12 years ago and has been maintained and further developed ever since, with many new features and improvements added over the years. The SAMtools and BCFtools packages represent a unique collection of tools that have been used in numerous other software projects and countless genomic pipelines.
Conclusion
Both SAMtools and BCFtools are freely available on GitHub under the permissive MIT licence, free for both non-commercial and commercial use. Both packages have been installed >1 million times via Bioconda. The source code and documentation are available from https://www.htslib.org.
Top-30
Journals
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Wellcome Open Research
616 publications, 5.3%
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Nature Communications
382 publications, 3.29%
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bioRxiv
316 publications, 2.72%
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Scientific Reports
188 publications, 1.62%
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BMC Genomics
156 publications, 1.34%
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Molecular Ecology
146 publications, 1.26%
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International Journal of Molecular Sciences
141 publications, 1.21%
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Nucleic Acids Research
122 publications, 1.05%
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G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics
111 publications, 0.95%
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Scientific data
101 publications, 0.87%
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Cell Reports
100 publications, 0.86%
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Molecular Biology and Evolution
99 publications, 0.85%
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Communications Biology
95 publications, 0.82%
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Microbiology Resource Announcements
95 publications, 0.82%
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Frontiers in Plant Science
93 publications, 0.8%
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PLoS ONE
92 publications, 0.79%
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iScience
90 publications, 0.77%
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Frontiers in Microbiology
87 publications, 0.75%
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Genome Biology
86 publications, 0.74%
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Viruses
85 publications, 0.73%
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Nature
85 publications, 0.73%
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eLife
85 publications, 0.73%
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Genome Biology and Evolution
82 publications, 0.71%
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Science
80 publications, 0.69%
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
78 publications, 0.67%
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Cell
73 publications, 0.63%
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Microbiology spectrum
69 publications, 0.59%
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Genes
65 publications, 0.56%
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Genome Research
60 publications, 0.52%
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Publishers
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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
2693 publications, 23.17%
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Springer Nature
2318 publications, 19.94%
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Elsevier
1387 publications, 11.93%
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Oxford University Press
907 publications, 7.8%
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Wiley
827 publications, 7.11%
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MDPI
670 publications, 5.76%
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F1000 Research
636 publications, 5.47%
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Frontiers Media S.A.
386 publications, 3.32%
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American Society for Microbiology
313 publications, 2.69%
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Public Library of Science (PLoS)
223 publications, 1.92%
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American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
148 publications, 1.27%
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Taylor & Francis
110 publications, 0.95%
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eLife Sciences Publications
86 publications, 0.74%
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
78 publications, 0.67%
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Microbiology Society
73 publications, 0.63%
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American Chemical Society (ACS)
40 publications, 0.34%
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Research Square Platform LLC
31 publications, 0.27%
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Scientific Societies
27 publications, 0.23%
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American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
26 publications, 0.22%
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The Royal Society
25 publications, 0.22%
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The Company of Biologists
21 publications, 0.18%
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Pleiades Publishing
19 publications, 0.16%
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Rockefeller University Press
16 publications, 0.14%
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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
15 publications, 0.13%
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Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
14 publications, 0.12%
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Pensoft Publishers
14 publications, 0.12%
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American Society for Clinical Investigation
13 publications, 0.11%
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PeerJ
12 publications, 0.1%
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- We do not take into account publications without a DOI.
- Statistics recalculated weekly.