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)
“Computers are good at swift, accurate computation and at storing great masses of information. The brain, on the other hand, is not as efficient a number cruncher and its memory is often highly fallible; a basic inexactness is built into its design. The brain’s strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it.”
—Jeremy Campbell (b. 1931)
“With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host of weak, half-formed, dilettante opinions, honest and dishonest ways of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)