Quality meets quantity – quality control, data standards and repositories

Abstract

In recent years, standardization and quality control have become important key points in industry, e.g. in drug discovery and for developing medical products. Is quality control in academic Proteomics a minor problem nowadays, where standard data formats and public repositories for data sharing exist? In this article, it is discussed how standard formats and repositories already support the documentation of quality control criteria in protein identification and quantification, and what has to be improved in the future: It is stated that the Proteomics community (represented by a group like the Proteomics Standards Initiative) will have to define a minimum document regarding quality control and to extend existing standards with additional quality control criteria enabling a substantial and standardized quality control process.