A 10 minute presentation given in Denver (CO) on the 16th September as part of the IG Elixir Bridging Force and Biosharing Registry WG joint session at the Research Data Alliance 8th Plenary (part of International Data Week). This presentation covers the use of community-defined metadata standards in the life science, making these standards FAIR, and how BioSharing can help.

1. Using community-defined metadata
standards in the FAIR principles:
how BioSharing helps
Peter McQuilton, PhD
BioSharing Content Lead
https://www.biosharing.org
@biosharing
Joint meeting: IG ELIXIR Bridging Force and WG BioSharing Registry
International Data Week, RDA, Denver, 16th September, 2016

2. de jure de facto
grass-roots
groups
standard
organizations
Nanotechnology Working Group
Community mobilisation to develop
content standards
Formats Terminologies Guidelines

3. 207
106
346
miame
MIAPA
MIRIAM
MIQAS
MIX
MIGEN
ARRIVE
MIAPE
MIASE
MIQE
MISFISHIE….
REMARK
CONSORT
MAGE-Tab
GCDML
SRAxml
SOFT
FASTA
DICOM
MzML
SBRML
SEDML…
GELML
ISA-Tab
CML
MITAB
AAO
CHEBI
OBI
PATO ENVO
MOD
BTO
IDO…
TEDDY
PRO
XAO
DO
VO
There are over 650 standards in the life
sciences
Formats Terminologies Guidelines

4. Guidelines = Minimum information
reporting requirements, checklists
o Report the same core, essential
information
o e.g. ARRIVE guidelines
Terminologies = Controlled
vocabularies, taxonomies,
thesauri, ontologies etc.
o Use the same word and
refer to the same ‘thing’
o e.g. Gene Ontology
Models/Formats = Conceptual
model, conceptual schema,
exchange formats
o Allow data to flow from one
system to another
o e.g. FASTA
Enablers: to better describe, share and
query data
Formats Terminologies Guidelines

5. Data policies by
funders, journals and
other organizations
(>100)
Database, tools
and services
(>1000)
Content standards
(>700)
Complex and evolving landscape
Formats Terminologies Guidelines

6. Helping stakeholders to find answers

7. What is BioSharing?
A web-based, curated and searchable portal that monitors the development and
evolution of standards, their use in databases and the adoption of both in data
policies, to inform and educate the user community.

8. What is BioSharing?
Standards are digital objects too and we make them FAIR

9. What data do we
capture for standards

10. 10
Criteria for evaluating standards

14. Ready for use, implementation, or recommendation
In development
Status uncertain
Deprecated as subsumed or superseded
Manually curated, approved by the community
Recording the life cycle of a resource

17. Discover standards, databases,
policies, and their relationships

18. Collections group together
one or more types of
resource by domain,
project or organization.
Recommendations are a
core-set of resources that
are selected and
recommended by a funder
or journal data policy.
Different cuts of the data

22. “BioSharing and its interactive browser will allow us to
discover which databases and standards are not currently
included in our author guidelines, enabling us to regularly
monitor and refine our policies as appropriate, in support of
our mission to help our authors enhance the reproducibility
of their work.” – Holly Murray, F1000Research

23. Advisory Board Operational Team