[Tdwg-phylo] Fwd: MIAPA Workshop at the TDWG 2011 meeting, New Orleans, LA

Arlin Stoltzfus arlin at umd.edu
Tue Sep 20 15:18:18 CEST 2011


With the workshop less than a month away, it might be a good time to  
start getting organized.  Do we have any way of knowing who is going  
to attend, other than the usual suspects?

Arlin

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Nico Cellinese <ncellinese at flmnh.ufl.edu>
> Date: August 15, 2011 10:36:10 AM EDT
> To: Phylogenetics Standards Interest Group <tdwg-phylo at lists.tdwg.org>
> Subject: [Tdwg-phylo] MIAPA Workshop at the TDWG 2011 meeting, New  
> Orleans, LA
>
> TDWG MIAPA Workshop
> Call For Participation:
> Steps towards a Minimum Information About a Phylogenetic Analysis  
> (MIAPA) Standard
> Synopsis
>
> Many phylogenetic analysis results are published in ways that  
> present serious barriers to their reuse in numerous research  
> applications that would stand to benefit from them. While some of  
> these barriers are well understood, such as issues with adherence to  
> standard exchange formats, those centering on the associated  
> metadata necessary for researchers to evaluate or reuse a published  
> phylogeny have only recently begun to be articulated. One of the  
> critical next steps towards formalizing these metadata requirements  
> as a minimum reporting standard is to convene meetings of key  
> stakeholder communities with the goal to identify information  
> attributes  necessary and desirable for facilitating reuse, and to  
> build consensus on their priority. To this end, we are holding a  
> workshop at the 2011 Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)  
> Conference to determine how a future reporting standard for  
> phylogenetic analyses can best serve biodiversity science and  
> related research applications.  We invite all interested colleagues  
> to participate.
> Background
>
> The workshop of the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG)  
> Phylogenetics Standards Interest Group held at the 2010 TDWG  
> conference included a project focused on how to publish re-usable  
> trees that can be linked into an emerging global web of data.   
> Through follow-up work, this led to the following tangible results:
> An online draft report of the 2010 TDWG workshop [1], and a  
> corresponding manuscript on best practices for publishing  
> phylogenetic trees (Stoltzfus et al. in preparation);
> An 2011 iEvoBio presentation on “Publishing re-usable phylogenetic  
> trees, in theory and in practice” [2];
> A lighting talk presentation and Birds-of-a-Feather gathering at  
> 2011 iEvoBio, and
> A survey group that explored barriers to re-use and developed plans  
> for a survey
> These activities have considerably clarified our understanding of  
> the theory and practice of publishing re-usable phylogenetic trees:  
> how many phylogenies are published each year, the (low) frequency of  
> archiving, what archives and tools are available, what policies are  
> in force, etc.  We have identified a number of barriers to re-use  
> involving such aspects as technology, standards, culture, and access.
> Many of these barriers can be interpreted as a consequence of the  
> lack of a community-agreed standard for what constitutes a well  
> documented phylogenetic record.  In the absence of such a standard,  
> trees are often archived as image files rather than in appropriate  
> data exchange formats, and lack important accompanying information  
> (metadata), such as externally meaningful identifiers, that would be  
> needed to make them useful to others. The idea of a Minimum  
> Information About a Phylogenetic Analysis (MIAPA) standard has been  
> suggested [3], but so far there has not been a deliberate process to  
> develop and disseminate a community standard.  Meanwhile, a number  
> of systematics and evolution journals have begun to require  
> archiving of the data underlying published research findings [4].   
> The emerging cultural shift in data archiving and sharing promoted  
> by this policy change offers a unique window of opportunity to move  
> ahead with the development and actual specification of a MIAPA  
> standard.
> Similar to other minimum reporting standards [5], the primary focus  
> of a future MIAPA standard would be on defining a “checklist” of  
> metadata information attributes that, at a minimum, needs to  
> accompany an archived phylogenetic analysis, and to which standards  
> values for these attributes would need to adhere. The key step in  
> developing community consensus on these elements of the standard is  
> to convene a series of meetings that collectively involve  
> participants from all major groups of stakeholders who would be  
> affected by such a standard, such as users, producers, publishers,  
> or archivists of phylogenetic analyses.  To aid this process, the  
> Phylogenetics Standards Interest Group is holding a workshop at the  
> 2011 TDWG conference, with the goal to obtain consensus requirements  
> and priorities for a MIAPA checklist for the purposes of  
> biodiversity science, taxonomy, museum collections, and related  
> research applications.
> Goals and deliverables
>
> The main goal of the workshop is to develop a shared understanding  
> of the role that a MIAPA standard could play in facilitating re-use  
> of phylogenetic analyses for the biodiversity science and related  
> communities, and what the standard would need to specify in order  
> to  best fill that role. Possible deliverables include
> A draft set of information attributes that should or could be  
> included in a provisional MIAPA checklist, with a level of consensus  
> for each of them.
> A database with use-cases based on exemplifying publications, that  
> report phylogenies to elucidate a broad spectrum of questions  
> relating to biodiversity science.
> A refined MIAPA survey to be informed by biodiversity science cases  
> for reuse.
> A plan for further community engagement and consensus-building among  
> biodiversity science stakeholders.
> Workshop format
>
> The workshop will start with a few presentations focused on (i)  
> introducing MIAPA and its potential in facilitating reuse (J.  
> Leebens-Mack); (ii) summarizing recent developments and current  
> status of MIAPA-related efforts (A. Stoltzfus); and (iii) past  
> experiences and resulting best practice recommendations on  
> developing a minimum reporting checklist standard (D. Field). The  
> rest of the workshop will be hands-on.  Participants in the workshop  
> will break out into groups to address separate issues according to  
> the anticipated deliverables and best practice recommendations.
> The workshop will be 1.5 days in duration, and be held during the  
> 2011 Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference, to take  
> place Oct 17 to 21, 2011 in New Orleans, USA. (http://www.tdwg.org/conference2011/ 
> ).  The workshop will start in the afternoon of Monday, Oct 17, and  
> end on Tuesday. Oct 18.
> How to participate
>
> Participation in the workshop is open to everyone interested.  
> However, space is limited, and we therefore ask that, if you are  
> interested in attending, to please communicate your interest through  
> the MIAPA discussion group [6]. This will also allow us to include  
> you in pre-workshop planning. Since the workshop is part of the TDWG  
> conference, participants will need to register either for the full  
> conference, or for the days of the workshop.
> The organizers will provide an electronic venue for participants to  
> share ideas and develop plans in advance of the workshop.  After the  
> initial presentations, participants will self-organize into task  
> groups.
> Organizers
> Nico Celinese, University of Florida
> Hilmar Lapp, NESCent
> Jim Leebens-Mack, University of Georgia
> Enrico Pontelli, New Mexico State University
> Arlin Stoltzfus, NIST & University of Maryland
> References
>
> [1] Whitacre et al. (2010). Current Best Practices for Publishing  
> Trees Electronically. http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/Phylogenetics/LinkingTrees2010
> [2] O’Meara et al. (2011). Publishing re-usable phylogenetic trees,  
> in theory and practice. Available from Nature Precedings <http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/npre.2011.6048.1 
> >
> [3] Leebens-Mack, J., T. Vision, et al. (2006). "Taking the first  
> steps towards a standard for reporting on phylogenies: Minimum  
> Information About a Phylogenetic Analysis (MIAPA)." Omics 10(2):  
> 231-7.
> [4] Whitlock, M., M. McPeek, M. Rausher, L. Rieseberg, and A. Moore  
> (2010). Data Archiving (Editorial). The American Naturalist 175(2):  
> 145.
> [5] Taylor, C.F., D. Field, S. Sansone, J. Aerts, R. Apweiler, M.  
> Ashburner, C.A. Ball, et al. (2008). Promoting coherent minimum  
> reporting guidelines for biological and biomedical investigations:  
> the MIBBI project. Nature Biotechnology 26(8): 889-96. doi:10.1038/ 
> nbt.1411
> [6] MIAPA discussion group: http://groups.google.com/group/miapa-discuss
> Published by Google Docs–Report Abuse–Updated automatically every 5  
> minutes

-------
Arlin Stoltzfus (arlin at umd.edu)
Fellow, IBBR; Adj. Assoc. Prof., UMCP; Research Biologist, NIST
IBBR, 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD
tel: 240 314 6208; web: www.molevol.org

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