Hello,
I am preparing a manuscript for a recent microbiome metabarcoding experiment analyzed by q2. Since we plan to make q2 artifacts (qza and qzv) available as electronic supplements, I would like to add a short instruction to the readers (and reviewers) how to view or access the data within the artifacts. In the new q2 documentation I found this page which explains the most important points of artifacts, and how to extract these data even without q2 installed. Great!
May I propose to add a link (and possibly short explanation) to https://view.qiime2.org/ on this page, possibly by adding an additional content header like this (either on to or below):
Viewing data in a QIIME 2 Archive without using QIIME 2 in your browser
Accessing data in a QIIME 2 Archive without using QIIME 2
Accessing data in a QIIME 2 Archive using QIIME 2
(...)
In my opinion, this docs page would then explain all possibilities of how to view or access q2 archives provided in electronic supplements or data repositories to non-q2 users. In manuscripts, a short sentence directing to this page should be sufficient.
Please apologize, if such a page is already available elsewhere, and I just did'nt find it 
Best regards,
Thank you for sharing your post. I'm also thinking about how to use and share .qza files.
Do you think reviewer 3 would be okay with this?
The .qza and .qzv files are simply zip files that store data alongside some QIIME 2-specific metadata. You can unzip .qza or .qzv files with any unzip utility, such as WinZip, 7Zip, or the CLI program unzip.
Hi @arwqiime,
I wrote this up, which contains the content I believe you're asking for. I'm still working on connecting all of the different pieces of the new documentation sites - this page might end up being embedded in the page that you linked to.
You may also be interested in this Artifact Repository that I put on Zenodo for one of our recent pre-prints. This could serve as a model for a way that you could provide .qza/.qzv files in a way that's easy for your readers to interact with.
Let us know if you have any other questions about this!
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Hi @gregcaporaso
Thank you for the link to use.qiime2.org page on visualizations. Together with the other page of how to access archives, the information given there should be enough to work with artifacts.
Your artifact repository desing is self-explanatory, exactly what reads want! Thank you for this example!
Best,
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