The Antibody Registry: A Community Authority for Antibody Research Resource Identifiers

Project SummaryOne of the most glaring yet easily addressable gaps in our current scientific workflow and publication system is improving the way that methods are reportedin particularthe lack of key methodological details necessary for interpreting and reproducing a studyMost authors continue to cite the name of the reagentlike an antibody using the vendorand the city where the vendor is locatedbut omit the catalog and lot number making antibodies very difficult to track downthereby reducing reproducibility of the paperThe Resource IdentificationRRIDInitiative has successfully implemented a solution to this lack of identificationby asking authors to include a persistent unique identifierRRIDfor each antibody along with a standard syntax that includes the lot informationThis syntax is now required in aboutjournals and accepted in at leastwas accepted into the EQUATOR network of standards and is under consideration by the JATS committeethe NISO standard for journal article metadataFor antibodiesRRIDs are assigned by the AntibodyRegistry orgwhich accepts full catalogs from antibody companies and individual antibody records from authorswho are unable to locate the record for the antibody that they used in a study or one which they created in their labThis process should be made as easy as possible for authorsand through text analysis we have devised a set of tools that should help authors create better records with less workThe AntibodyRegistry org was created as part of an academic project and it has successfully incorporated millions of antibody recordsthousands of which have now been cited in scientific papers using the RRID syntaxThe use of RRID is growingand in order to support the longer term sustainability of the AntibodyRegistry orga core community authority for RRIDsthis resource needs to be enhanced to align with the available commercial and non commercial funding sourcesWe propose the addition of featuresvaluable to antibody companies and journalsto improve market intelligence and reporting around antibodiesWe also propose to auto generate antibody entries for authors and curators when submitting curating an antibody to decrease the time it takes to complete the taskthereby reducing the barrier to entry and cost Project Narrative The AntibodyRegistry org is a catalog of antibodies used in research and serves as the antibody identifier source for the Research Resource IdentifierRRIDinitiativeThe use of these identifiers improves rigor and transparency in compliance with both journal and NIH standardsAs the RRID initiative growsthe AntibodyRegistry org is becoming an increasingly well used and valuable resourcerequiring increased attention from curation staffImprovements to the AntibodyRegistry org are needed to increase commercial value and thereby its sustainabilitydecrease curation costand provide a higher level of service to the scientific community