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Background Assessing the safety of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) is an interdisciplinary and complex process producing huge amounts of information and data. To make such data and metadata reusable for researchers, manufacturers, and regulatory authorities, there is an urgent need to record and provide this information in a structured, harmonized, and digitized way. Results This study aimed to identify appropriate description standards and quality criteria for the special use in nanosafety. There are many existing standards and guidelines designed for collecting data and metadata, ranging from regulatory guidelines to specific databases. Most of them are incomplete or not specifically designed for ENM research. However, by merging the content of several existing standards and guidelines, a basic catalogue of descriptive information and quality criteria was generated. In an iterative process, our interdisciplinary team identified deficits and added missing information into a comprehensive schema. Subsequently, this overview was externally evaluated by a panel of experts during a workshop. This whole process resulted in a minimum information table (MIT), specifying necessary minimum information to be provided along with experimental results on effects of ENMs in the biological context in a flexible and modular manner. The MIT is divided into six modules: general information, material information, biological model information, exposure information, endpoint read out information and analysis and statistics. These modules are further partitioned into module subdivisions serving to include more detailed information. A comparison with existing ontologies, which also aim to electronically collect data and metadata on nanosafety studies, showed that the newly developed MIT exhibits a higher level of detail compared to those existing schemas, making it more usable to prevent gaps in the communication of information. Conclusion Implementing the requirements of the MIT into e.g., electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) would make the collection of all necessary data and metadata a daily routine and thereby would improve the reproducibility and reusability of experiments. Furthermore, this approach is particularly beneficial regarding the rapidly expanding developments and applications of novel non-animal alternative testing methods.

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It has been widely recognized that nanosafety studies are limited in reproducibility, caused by missing or inadequate information and data gaps. Reliable and comprehensive studies should be performed supported by standards or guidelines, which need to be harmonized and usable for the multidisciplinary field of nanosafety research. The previously described minimal information table (MIT), based on existing standards or guidelines, represents one approach towards harmonization. Here, we demonstrate the applicability and advantages of the MIT by a round-robin test. Its modular structure enables describing individual studies comprehensively by a combination of various relevant aspects. Three laboratories conducted a WST-1 cell viability assay using A549 cells to analyze the effects of the reference nanomaterials NM101 and NM110 according to predefined (S)OPs. The MIT contains relevant and defined descriptive information and quality criteria and thus supported the implementation of the round-robin test from planning, investigation to analysis and data interpretation. As a result, we could identify sources of variability and justify deviating results attributed to differences in specific procedures. Consequently, the use of the MIT contributes to the acquisition of reliable and comprehensive datasets and therefore improves the significance and reusability of nanosafety studies.