Steps towards a Minimum Information About a Phylogenetic Analysis (MIAPA) Standard

Synopsis and Goal

Many phylogenetic analysis results are published in ways that present serious barriers to their reuse in numerous research applications that would stand to benefit from them. While some of these barriers are well understood, such as issues with adherence to standard exchange formats, those centering on the associated metadata necessary for researchers to evaluate or reuse a published phylogeny have only recently begun to be articulated. One of the critical next steps towards formalizing these metadata requirements as a minimum reporting standard is to convene meetings of key stakeholder communities with the goal to identify information attributes necessary and desirable for facilitating reuse, and to build consensus on their priority. To this end, we held a workshop at the 2011 TDWG Conference to determine how a future reporting standard for phylogenetic analyses can best serve biodiversity science and related research applications. We invited all interested colleagues to participate.

After initial informational talks, participants self-organized into clusters based on common interests.

Links and Resources

Links:

• Call for participation
• Ideas page for developing project ideas for this workshop
• All electronic pre and post-workshop communication will take place on the miapa-discuss mailing list. Please subscribe there to stay in the loop.
• MIAPA home at EvoIO (with links to many related resources and activities)
• MIAPA entry at MIBBI
• Follow-ups for building on results of this workshop

Related pages:

• Organizers' conference call notes

Relevant publications:

• Leebens-Mack, Jim, Todd Vision, Eric Brenner, John E Bowers, Steven Cannon, Mark J Clement, Clifford W Cunningham, et al. 2006. €œTaking the first steps towards a standard for reporting on phylogenies: Minimum Information About a Phylogenetic Analysis (MIAPA). Omics: a Journal of Integrative Biology 10: 231-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/omi.2006.10.231
• Taylor, Chris F, Dawn Field, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Jan Aerts, Rolf Apweiler, Michael Ashburner, Catherine A Ball, et al. 2008. Promoting coherent minimum reporting guidelines for biological and biomedical investigations: the MIBBI project. Nature Biotechnology 26: 889-96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.1411
• Field, Dawn, and Susanna-Assunta Sansone. 2006. €œA Special Issue on Data Standards.€ OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology 10: 84-93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/omi.2006.10.84

Agenda

Venue: Bourbon Rm., Mezzanine 2

Monday, October 17, Opening session

• 2:00 Opening talks (15 min + 5 min questions)
  • 2:00 Jim Leebens-Mack, "Defining objectives and requirements for MIAPA, a minimum information reporting standard for phylogenetics"
  • 2:20 Arlin Stoltzfus, "Current & Best Practices for Sharing Trees & Associated Data"
  • 2:40 Dawn Field, "The Path to Building Consensus: Can good minimum information checklists be created by the community?"
• 3:00 Open discussion.  Supporting biodiversity applications (of sharing trees & associated data)
• 3:15 break
• 3:45 Open Discussion, continued.  Supporting biodiversity applications
• 5:00 Self-organization into clusters
• 5:30 adjourn

Tuesday, October 18, work day (clusters will take breaks as needed)

• 8:30 doors open for those who are skipping the plenary talk
• 9:15 am Recap of hands-on activities planned for today
• 9:30 Break out into 3 parallel subgroups, each creating a strawman MIAPA checklist
• 10.45 Coffee break
• 11.15 Report-outs from subgroups, reconciliation of checklist strawmen to identify core terms
• 12.30 pm Lunch break
• 2:00 Work session with the following subgroups:
  1. Scope and use-cases (leader: Susan Perkins)
  2. Community survey for MIAPA strawman attributes (leader: Hilmar Lapp)
• 5:00 Reports from subgroups (5 min each), followed by discussion
• 5:25 Wrap-up
• 5:30 adjourn

Participants