title: The first RSBI (ISA-TAB) workshop: "can a simple format work for complex studies?".
abstract: This article summarizes the motivation for, and the proceedings of, the first ISA-TAB workshop held December 6-8, 2007, at the EBI, Cambridge, UK. This exploratory workshop, organized by members of the Microarray Gene Expression Data (MGED) Society's Reporting Structure for Biological Investigations (RSBI) working group, brought together a group of developers of a range of collaborative systems to discuss the use of a common format to address the pressing need of reporting and communicating data and metadata from biological, biomedical, and environmental studies employing combinations of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics technologies along with more conventional methodologies. The expertise of the participants comprised database development, data management, and hands-on experience in the development of data communication standards. The workshop's outcomes are set to help formalize the proposed Investigation, Study, Assay (ISA)-TAB tab-delimited format for representing and communicating experimental metadata. This article is part of the special issue of OMICS on the activities of the Genomics Standards Consortium (GSC).
authors.affiliation: EMBL-EBI The European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom. sansone@ebi.ac.uk
authors.forename: Susanna-Assunta
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Sansone
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rocca-Serra
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brandizi
authors.forename: Alvis
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Brazma
authors.forename: Dawn
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Field
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fostel
authors.forename: Andrew G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Garrow
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gilbert
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Goodsaid
authors.forename: Nigel
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hardy
authors.forename: Phil
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Allyson
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lister
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Norman
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Morrison
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rayner
authors.forename: Nataliya
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sklyar
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.forename: Weida
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Tong
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Warner
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wiemann
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology; D003628:Database Management Systems; D004493:Education; D023281:Genomics; D040901:Proteomics; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics; D006113:United Kingdom
chemical_list: D012333:RNA, Messenger