The Library of Integrated Network-based Signatures (LINCS) program generates a wide variety of cell-based perturbation-response signatures using diverse assay technologies. For example, LINCS includes large-scale transcriptional profiling of genetic and small molecule perturbations, and various proteomics and imaging datasets. We have developed data processing pipelines, and supporting informatics infrastructure to access, standardize and harmonize, register and publish LINCS datasets and metadata from all Data and Signature Generating Centers (DSGC’s). Metadata standards specifications provide a foundation for harmonizing and integrating LINCS data. Here we introduce a CEDAR-based LINCS Community Metadata Environment, to support end-to-end metadata management framework that supports authoring, curation, validation, management, and sharing of LINCS metadata, while building upon the existing LINCS metadata standards and data-release workflows. Following this initial validation, our goal is to create reusable metadata modules with user friendly templates for each of the LINCS metadata categories and to make our suite of tools compatible with the CEDAR metadata technologies. This should further simplify metadata handling in the LINCS consortium and facilitate a global metadata repository at CEDAR. As other projects apply the same approach, many more datasets will become cross-searchable and can be linked optimizing the metadata pathway from submission to discovery
