A perspective on the standards describing mass spectrometry-based metabolic phenotyping (metabolomics/metabonomics) studies in publications.

As metabolic phenotyping (metabolomics, metabonomics and also lipidomics) gains in popularity and new investigators enter the field, the need to maintain and improve standards in publication is ever more pressing. In this perspective the requirements for information that should be included in manuscripts published in the Journal of Chromatography B, to ensure that the work is both credible and repeatable, are discussed. These include aspects such as study design, ethics, quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC) and data processing. In addition, aspects such as the level of confidence required for reporting metabolite identification (to a level where they could be subsequently used to develop hypotheses) are discussed.