Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Department, Institute for Integrative Toxicology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2023 Jun;131(6):65001. doi: 10.1289/EHP11484. Epub 2023 Jun 23.
Funding agencies, publishers, and other stakeholders are pushing environmental health science investigators to improve data sharing; to promote the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles; and to increase the rigor and reproducibility of the data collected. Accomplishing these goals will require significant cultural shifts surrounding data management and strategies to develop robust and reliable resources that bridge the technical challenges and gaps in expertise.
In this commentary, we examine the current state of managing data and metadata-referred to collectively as (meta)data-in the experimental environmental health sciences. We introduce new tools and resources based on experiments to serve as examples for the broader field.
We discuss previous and ongoing efforts to improve (meta)data collection and curation. These include global efforts by the Functional Genomics Data Society to develop metadata collection tools such as the Investigation, Study, Assay (ISA) framework, and the Center for Expanded Data Annotation and Retrieval. We also conduct a case study of data deposited in the Gene Expression Omnibus that demonstrates the current state of environmental health data and highlights the value of using the tools we propose to support data deposition.
The environmental health science community has played a key role in efforts to achieve the goals of the FAIR guiding principles and is well positioned to advance them further. We present a proposed framework to further promote these objectives and minimize the obstacles between data producers and data scientists to maximize the return on research investments. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11484.
资助机构、出版商和其他利益相关者正在推动环境健康科学研究人员改进数据共享；促进可发现性、可访问性、互操作性和可重用性（FAIR）原则；并提高所收集数据的严谨性和可重复性。要实现这些目标，需要在数据管理方面进行重大的文化转变，并制定策略来开发强大可靠的资源，以弥合技术挑战和专业知识差距。
在这篇评论中，我们检查了实验环境健康科学中管理数据和元数据（统称为元数据）的当前状态。我们根据实验引入了新的工具和资源，作为更广泛领域的范例。
我们讨论了以前和正在进行的改进（元）数据收集和策展的努力。这些努力包括功能基因组学数据协会（Functional Genomics Data Society）的全球努力，以开发元数据收集工具，如调查、研究、分析（ISA）框架和扩展数据注释和检索中心。我们还对基因表达综合数据库（Gene Expression Omnibus）中存储的数据进行了案例研究，展示了当前环境健康数据的状态，并强调了使用我们提出的工具支持数据存储的价值。
环境健康科学社区在实现 FAIR 指导原则目标的努力中发挥了关键作用，并且处于进一步推进这些目标的有利地位。我们提出了一个建议的框架，以进一步促进这些目标，并最大限度地减少数据生产者和数据科学家之间的障碍，以最大限度地提高研究投资的回报。https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11484.
