Overview
- Nature Microbiology published the STREAMS consensus guidelines on December 1, detailing a framework for environmental and host-associated microbiome studies.
- The checklist comprises 67 items designed to be machine-readable and aligned with existing metadata standards to ease submission to public repositories.
- Items are organized by manuscript sections to help researchers report essentials such as permits, sampling context, and proper citation of reused data.
- The guidelines were produced by nearly 250 contributors from 28 countries following an American Society for Microbiology Microbe Conference workshop with researchers, repositories, editors, and funders.
- STREAMS incorporates emerging practices such as AI usage reporting and is positioned as a living resource with tutorials and user guides, with the team preparing an LLM-based paper to aid adoption.