Lead: Anastasios (Tassos) Papadiamantis (University of Birmingham) / Deputy: Antreas Afantitis (NovaMechanics)

Participating Partners: UoB, EdC, CEH, NTUA, UCD, LEITAT, BfR, NovaMechanics, Biomax, UM, Duke University

The role of Work Package 3 (WP3) is to support knowledge integration from the experimentalists (testing) perspective, looking at quality aspects of integration of workflows, integration of electronic laboratory notebooks into the NanoCommons platform.

To address the issue of data quality, a suite of tools for performing quality control analyses and (pre)processing will be made available through NanoCommons. Quality assurance (QA) will also be included in the processing, analysis and modelling tools.  Rigorous application of standards will ensure internal consistency and compatibility with data from other projects (OECD Testing Programme of Manufactured Nanomaterials, NanoREG, NanoMILE, GUIDEnano, NanoFASE etc.).

The NanoCommons team will facilitate the knowledge generators to feed directly into the process and to harmonise data generation workflows and data management and curation workflows to provide quality-assured data into the NanoCommons Data Ecosystem.

WP3 objectives are thus to:

• develop integrated workflows that allow streamlined capture of data from source (e.g. instrument) or electronic lab notebooks, and enable the integration of raw and processed data as well as render them searchable and re-usable, based on consultation with the community;
• Integrate quality criteria for experimental design (reliability / repeatability criteria) into the experimental data capture templates to ensure data quality from point of generation and as guidance for researchers;
• Integrate experimental protocols and metadata, and quality assurance analysis based on degree of data tabs completion in data templates as an initial indicator of quality, and as an automated QA procedure to meet recognised standards;
• Support the adaption of assays for routine use by Contract Research Organisations once they pass the automated QA procedure to meet recognised standards and pass to NA and TA for widespread dissemination.