Livesey, Benjamin J.Badonyi, MihalyDias, MafaldaFrazer, JonathanKumar, SushantLindorff-Larsen, KrestenMcCandlish, David M.Orenbuch, RoseShearer, Courtney A.Muffley, LaraForeman, JuliaGlazer, Andrew M.Lehner, Ben, 1978-Marks, Debora S.Roth, Frederick P.Rubin, Alan F.Starita, Lea M.Marsh, Joseph A.2025-09-022025-09-022025Livesey BJ, Badonyi M, Dias M, Frazer J, Kumar S, Lindorff-Larsen K, et al. Guidelines for releasing a variant effect predictor. Genome Biol. 2025 Apr 15;26(1):97. DOI: 10.1186/s13059-025-03572-z1474-7596http://hdl.handle.net/10230/71095Computational methods for assessing the likely impacts of mutations, known as variant effect predictors (VEPs), are widely used in the assessment and interpretation of human genetic variation, as well as in other applications like protein engineering. Many different VEPs have been released, and there is tremendous variability in their underlying algorithms, outputs, and the ways in which the methodologies and predictions are shared. This leads to considerable difficulties for users trying to navigate the selection and application of VEPs. Here, to address these issues, we provide guidelines and recommendations for the release of novel VEPs.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Biologia computacionalinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13059-025-03572-zinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess