A Cross-Institutional, FAIR VIVO for Metabolomics Michael Conlon, Kevin S. Hanson, Taeber Rapczak, Naomi Braun, Christopher P. Barnes, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA Metabolomics Data The Metabolomics Workbench (MWB) (https://metabolomicsworkbench.org) is the National Metabolomics Data Repository of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Anyone can deposit data to the MWB. As of August 28, 2019, the workbench provides data from 982 publicly available studies. Another 205 studies are currently embargoed and will be available subject to their embargo dates. MWB develops and uses RefMet (http://bit.ly/2PkxY5p), a nomenclature for representing metabolites found using mass spectroscopy (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. Investigators upload study data to the workbench and provide metadata regarding themselves and their work. The MWB provides an API that can be used to access metadata about studies and investigators. MWB metadata has been mapped to an ontology developed by the authors to represent it as RDF and load it to VIVO. PubMed (http://pubmed.gov) is an open access index to literature in metabolomics. Its API can be used to find and retrieve publication data regarding metabolomics investigators. Many groups use PubMed data in VIVO. PubMed data has been mapped to the VIVO Ontology (http://vivoweb.org/ontology/core) Data regarding software used in metabolomics studies has been difficult to find. An index to such software will be created and curated by a group at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus funded by the NIH. This data will be in the form of a spreadsheet. The authors will use the Software Ontology (SWO) (http://www.obofoundry.org/ontology/swo.html) to represent the data as RDF and load the data into VIVO. Metabolomics Metabolomics is the scientific study of metabolites present within an organism, cell, or tissue. Human metabolites are small molecules found in human tissue that occur naturally as a result of human metabolism, or are present as a result of drugs, food components, or exposure to environmental conditions. Along with genomics (the study of DNA), transcriptomics (RNA), proteomics (proteins), metabolomics provides information regarding biochemical compounds and processes in cells, leading to a better understanding of cellular biology. “Metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of a cell, and thus, metabolomics provides a direct "functional readout of the physiological state" of an organism.” (Wikipedia http://bit.ly/2Pg06X3) Such profiles can be used to distinguish tissue types, disease states, and health status of individuals. Understanding the changes in profiles over time can lead to improved understanding of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, leading to potential treatments. Over 450,000 human metabolites have been identified to date. Metabolomics is considered an emerging field. Technical challenges in compound identification and data analysis are significant. The NIH Common Fund Metabolomics consortium originated in 2013 to help address these and other challenges. Fourteen investigators across the US are supported to advance metabolomics. Five are engaged in compound identification, seven in software tools and data analysis. The group at UCSD supports the Metabolomics Workbench, a data repository. The group at the University of Florida provides overall coordination for the consortium. FAIR Data Principles The FAIR Data Principles (Wilkinson, et. al https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618) provide a framework for creating data that can be used by groups beyond the group that created the data. The principles are difficult to achieve in practice and much has been written about implementation. VIVO supports the principles naturally, it is designed to share data. • Findable – data should be found using search engines on the Internet • Accessible – the data can be accessed without technical, legal or operational barr