The number of lipidomics experiments is rapidly growing in the previous 10 years and so does the frequency of published articles in scientific articles describing these experiments. However, many publications do not provide complete or transparent set of information to either comprehend, reproduce, or even reuse the data or results from these experiments. These reports may lack a controlled vocabulary, a clear structure, or even no access to the raw data. Another issue emerges, when non-lipidomics specialized journals send articles for peer review to non-domain experts for a sophisticated assessment of the described methods.
In a community-wide effort, we implemented an interactive lipidomics reporting checklist [1, 2] to overcome these limitations. The Lipidomics Standards Initiative (LSI) compiled guidelines for minimum reporting standards with the assistance of the lipidomics community of the International Lipidomics Society (ILS). The interactive checklist is a web-based questionnaire. Users can select several lipidomics methods such as direct infusion or separation to customize their report. The checklist guides the user through eight sections, i.e., Overall study design, Preanalytics, Lipid extraction, Analytical platform, Lipid Identification & Quantification, Quality control, Method qualification and validation, and Reporting. Each section demands a minimum set of information in order to continue. The resulting pdf report can further be, e.g., attached as supplementary to an article, and/or published separately via the Zenodo platform. This system intends to support analytical chemists to ensure that their provided data are of highest level as well as educate young scientists in this field to learn the crucial requirements within this discipline. The questions in the checklist provide profound explanations and link to literature for further details. The checklist is free of charge and can be used without any limitations.
[1] MacDonald, J.G., Ejsing, C.S., Kopczynski, D. et al. (2022). Nature Metabolism. 4, 1086-1088.