Proteomics researchers taking part in a National Institutes of Health workshop this week discussed the merits of making raw data sets openly available, as well as the challenges of validating interpretation of mass spectrometry spectra.

Speaking at the two-day conference, which covered standards in proteomics, John Yates of the Scripps Research Institute sparked debate by saying that storage space for large data sets is an issue and that he does not favor distributing data sets because he does not find reanalyzing data sets to be that useful.