Minimum Information Standards

Minimum Information (MI) standards or reporting guidelines specify the minimum amount of meta data (information) and data required to meet a specific aim or aims. Usually the aim is to provide enough meta data and data to enable the unambiguous reproduction and interpretation of an experiment. MI guidelines are normally informal human readable specifications that inform the development of formal data models (e.g. XML or UML), data exchange formats (e.g. FuGE, MAGE-ML, MAGE-TAB) or knowledge models such as an ontology (e.g. OBI, MGED-Ontology).

MI standards are developed by working bodies of practitioners working in a particular scientific domain. The MI standards listed below are all from the life sciences, largely driven by the development of high throughput experimental technologies.

These MI standards groups have been brought together in 2007 to form the "Minimum Information about a Biomedical or Biological Investigation" (MIBBI) umbrella community. More information about the MIBBI initiative and the MIBBI Foundry can be found below and on the MIBBI homepage

Famous quotes containing the words minimum, information and/or standards:

    There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.
    —H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)

    The information links are like nerves that pervade and help to animate the human organism. The sensors and monitors are analogous to the human senses that put us in touch with the world. Data bases correspond to memory; the information processors perform the function of human reasoning and comprehension. Once the postmodern infrastructure is reasonably integrated, it will greatly exceed human intelligence in reach, acuity, capacity, and precision.
    Albert Borgman, U.S. educator, author. Crossing the Postmodern Divide, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1992)

    The technologist was the final guise of the white missionary, industrialization the last gospel of a dying race and living standards a substitute for a purpose in living.
    Max Frisch (1911–1991)