Understanding Data Analysis Steps in Mass-Spectrometry-Based Proteomics Is Key to Transparent Reporting

Mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics data analysis is composed of many stages from quality control, data cleaning, and normalization to statistical and functional analysis, without forgetting multiple visualization steps. All of these need to be reported next to published results to make them fully understandable and reusable for the community. Although this seems straightforward, exhaustively reporting all aspects of an analysis workflow can be tedious and error prone. This letter reports good practices when describing data analysis of MS-based proteomics data and discusses why and how the community should put efforts into more transparently reporting data analysis workflows.