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The Metabolomics Standards Initiative (MSI)

From November 2015: You will be redirected to the new MSI site http://metabolomics-msi.org/

The Metabolomics Society has appointed an Oversight Committee to monitor, coordinate and review the efforts of working groups (WG) in specialist areas that will examine standardization and make recommendations. The overall chair of this committee is Oliver Fiehn. The five MSI WGs, some of which are divided into further subgroups, are listed here:

  • Biological context metadata WG
  • Chemical analysis WG
  • Data processing WG
  • Ontology WG
  • Exchange format WG

  • The structure of the WGs thus follows the general “workflow” model in metabolomics: from a description of the study design to sample workup, data acquisition, processing and export, bound together by controlled vocabularies and relationships between the terms used.

    The MSI WGs are working towards developing the following standards:
    1. Core Information for Metabolomics Reporting (CIMR): This document will specify the minimal guidelines reporting metabolomics work. It will do so in a textual form and will seek in the long term to cover all application areas and analysis technologies. This document will be developed by the biological context metadata WG, the chemical analysis WG, the data processing WG, the exchange format WG and the ontology WG.

    2. Ontology: The CV and ontology will be developed iteratively by the ontology WG on the basis of CIMR. This will be done in collaboration with: HUPO-PSI, MGED and FuGO.

    3. Exchange format: A data model and exchange format will be developed by the exchange format WG on the basis of CIMR, making use of the MSI ontology. This will be done in a collaborative and iterative approach, including HUPO-PSI and FUGE



    How to join MSI workgroups

    If you want to join one or more of the WGs please do so through their mailing-lists:


    WG description WG chairs WG list email address WG list subscribe
    Biological context metadata WG Don Robertson, Jules Griffin, Wayne Matson, Mariet van der Werf, Basil Nikolau, Dawn Field msi-workgroups-bio-metadata https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msi-workgroups-bio-metadata
    Chemical analysis WG Lloyd Sumner, Teresa Fan msi-workgroups-chemical-analysis https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msi-workgroups-chemical-analysis
    Data processing WG Roy Goodacre msi-workgroups-data-processing https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msi-workgroups-data-processing
    Ontology WG Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Ricardo Pietrobon msi-workgroups-ontology https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msi-workgroups-ontology
    Exchange format WG Nigel Hardy, Chris Taylor msi-workgroups-exchange-format https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/msi-workgroups-exchange-format


    This website is maintained by Daniel Schober: schober[at]ebi.ac.uk

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