Towards a common standard for data and specimen provenance in life sciences

Open and practical exchange, dissemination, and reuse of specimen and data has become a fundamental requirement for life sciences research. The quality of the data obtained and thus the findings and knowledge derived is thus significantly influenced by the quality of the samples, the experimental methods and the data analysis. Therefore, a comprehensive and precise documentation of the pre-analytical conditions, the analytical procedures and the data processing is essential to be able to assess the validity of the research results. With the increasing importance of the exchange, reuse and sharing of data and samples, procedures are required that enable cross-organizational documentation, traceability, and non-repudiation. At present, this information on the provenance of samples and data is mostly either sparse, incomplete, or incoherent. Since there is no uniform framework, this information is usually only provided within the organization and not interoperably. At the same time, collection and sharing of biological and environmental specimens increasingly requires definition and documentation of benefit sharing and compliance to regulatory requirements rather than consideration of the pure scientific needs. In this publication, we present an ongoing standardization effort to provide trustworthy machine-actionable documentation of the data lineage and specimens. We would like to invite experts from biotechnology and biomedical fields to further contribute to the standard