Data standard for nanosafety research data published on ‘FAIRsharing.org’

Partners of the LRA Advanced Materials Safety, of which IfADo is a member, have published the results of one of their collaborations, a data guideline for description of research data called Minimum Information Table for the Safety of Engineered Nanomaterials (MIT Nanosafety), on the platform FAIRsharing.org. In addition, the guideline is also listed in the ELIXIR Toxicology Community Collection.

The modular table resulted from the research project NanoS-QM (2019-2021, funded by BMBF). Collaborators of the preceding Leibniz Research Alliance Nanosafety (2012-2020) developed and tested quality standards for their research area. Their aim was to improve data quality in the complex and multidisciplinary research area of nanosafety for an improved and comprehensible risk assessment and regulation. Crucial was the collaboration of experts from different areas for development and thorough verification of all parts of the MIT. Furthermore, the table was also assessed by external experts in a workshop and its usability was tested in a round robin experiment at different laboratories.

FAIRsharing.org is a platform, that describes and connects community-developed data and metadata standards, databases, repositories, and data strategies. The MIT is the only listed standard on FAIRsharing.org that maps the entire process of safety research for nanoparticles and that includes the most important scientific and regulatory standards. The modular approach allows scientists of all involved research areas of nanosafety to use the standard for the aspects they are examining.

Currently, the present partners of the multidisciplinary Leibniz Research Alliance Advanced Materials Safety are using the MIT for the development of functional and accepted, safe and sustainable advanced materials, especially also in the context of electronic laboratory notebooks.