Is Current Practice Adhering to Guidelines Proposed for Metabolite Identification in LC-MS Untargeted Metabolomics? A Meta-Analysis of the Literature

Metabolite identification remains a bottleneck and a still unregulated area in untargeted LC-MS metabolomics. The metabolomics research community and, in particular, the metabolomics standards initiative (MSI) proposed minimum reporting standards for metabolomics including those for reporting metabolite identification as long ago as 2007. Initially, four levels were proposed ranging from level 1 (unambiguously identified analyte) to level 4 (unidentified analyte). This scheme was expanded in 2014, by independent research groups, to give five levels of confidence. Both schemes provided guidance to the researcher and described the logical steps that had to be made to reach a confident reporting level. These guidelines have been presented and discussed extensively, becoming well-known to authors, editors, and reviewers for academic publications. Despite continuous promotion within the metabolomics community, the application of such guidelines is questionable. The scope of this meta-analysis was to systematically review the current LC-MS-based literature and effectively determine the proportion of papers following the proposed guidelines. Also, within the scope of this meta-analysis was the measurement of the actual identification levels reported in the literature, that is to find how many of the published papers really reached full metabolite identification (level 1) and how many papers did not reach this level.