COordination of Standards in MetabOlomicS (COSMOS): facilitating integrated metabolomics data access

TLDR

Metabolomics is a key phenotyping technique across medicine, life sciences, biotechnology, and environmental research, yet the lack of standardized data infrastructure hampers the transfer, storage, comparison, and reuse of experimental information among researchers, publishers, and funders. COSMOS aims to develop a robust data infrastructure and exchange standards for metabolomics data and metadata to support workflows across the European metabolomics community and beyond. The initiative builds an XML‑based open‑source data exchange format, addresses missing ontologies and complex metadata capture, and calls on academia, industry, publishers, and vendors to collaborate on updating and implementing these standards.

Abstract

Metabolomics has become a crucial phenotyping technique in a range of research fields including medicine, the life sciences, biotechnology and the environmental sciences. This necessitates the transfer of experimental information between research groups, as well as potentially to publishers and funders. After the initial efforts of the metabolomics standards initiative, minimum reporting standards were proposed which included the concepts for metabolomics databases. Built by the community, standards and infrastructure for metabolomics are still needed to allow storage, exchange, comparison and re-utilization of metabolomics data. The Framework Programme 7 EU Initiative 'coordination of standards in metabolomics' (COSMOS) is developing a robust data infrastructure and exchange standards for metabolomics data and metadata. This is to support workflows for a broad range of metabolomics applications within the European metabolomics community and the wider metabolomics and biomedical communities' participation. Here we announce our concepts and efforts asking for re-engagement of the metabolomics community, academics and industry, journal publishers, software and hardware vendors, as well as those interested in standardisation worldwide (addressing missing metabolomics ontologies, complex-metadata capturing and XML based open source data exchange format), to join and work towards updating and implementing metabolomics standards.