IBISBA involves multiple disciplines and countries having slightly different definitions and typical use of terms. With English not being the primary language, yet being the common language in use, inexact terms have become typical in certain regions and cultures. The IBISBA Terminology is a coherent set of words and phrases that have been agreed upon within the IBISBA Enterprise to advocate common underestanding. The ultimate goal is to harmonize the use of terms and their definitions across all operations within the IBISBA Enterprise.

The words and phrases listed below are a small subset of the IBISBA Termbase. The full list of past, present, and potential future terms is found online in a location chosen by the Terminology Taskforce.

You may contribute new terms and definitions either directly through the IBISBA Terminology Taskforce or via IBISBA Management.

Term or acronym Definition
Access ‘Access’ refers to the legitimate and authorised physical, remote and virtual admission to, interactions with and use of Research Infrastructures and to services offered by Research Infrastructures to Users. Such Access can be granted, amongst others, to machine time, computing resources, software, data, data-communication services, trust and authentication services, sample preparation, archives, collections, the set-up, execution and dismantling of experiments, education and training, expert support and analytical services.
Accessible A resource is Accessible if it meets the following criteria. A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardised communications protocol. A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable. A1.2 The protocol allows for an authentication and authorisation procedure, where necessary. A2. Metadata are accessible, even when the data are no longer available.
Action Activity (work package or part thereof) described in a Grant Agreement.
Agreement Any written understanding or arrangement reached between two or more parties.
ALE Acronym for Adaptive Laboratory Evolution, an experiment intended to improve some physiological aspect by exposing a micro-organism to repeated and/or increasingly more challenging conditions for growth where only the most adapted members of the community become enriched.
Assay Analytical measurement. Test performed either on material taken from the subject or on the whole initial subject, which produce qualitative or quantitative measurements (data). Specific, individual experiments, measurements, or modelling tasks. Analytical protocol. A procedure for measuring the biochemical activity of a sample. An ordered list of instructions for how to perform an analysis or take a measurement.
Asset Any (tangible or intangible) output of the action such as data, knowledge or information — whatever its form or nature, whether it can be protected or not — that is generated in the action, as well as any rights attached to it, including intellectual property rights.
BioPart Means any DNA-based biological component to which a function is associated. Examples of Bioparts are Promoters, Ribosome Binding Sites (RBS), Transcriptional and Translational Terminators, Protein Coding sequences; Plasmid Backbones (or templates).
Build Part of the DBTL-cycle where a new version of the biocatalyst is generated.
CA Acronym for Consortium Agreement. A contract between members of an IBISBA consortium that further specifies the code of conduct with respect to actions undertaken by the consortium in a Grant Agreement.
Client See User (research infrastructure)
Computational workflow A computational workflow is a predefined sequence of software and scripts that can be automatically executed for specific data by an instance of that workflow.
Contract An agreement enforcible by law.
Crowdsourcing The practice of obtaining information or input by enlisting the services of a large number of people.
Curation The selection, organization, and presentation of content using professional or expert knowledge to improve the quality.
Customer A client that has employed IBISBA services at multiple occasions.
DBTL cycle The Design–Build–Test–Learn (DBTL) cycle in synthetic biology is a metabolic engineering concept for the iterative improvement of a biocatalyzed production process.
DBTL-P A classification scheme constituting categories for Design, Build, Test, Learn, and Process.
DBTL-U Acronym for Design-Build-Test-Learn-Upscale, a modified DBTL cycle where one target is to increase the operating scale of the bioprocess.
Define Define is to determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
Design Part of the DBTL cycle where changes to the biocatalyst or the bioprocess is planned based on existing insight.
DOI Acronym for Digital Object Identifier, which is a globally unique identifier for electronic assets.
Experiment A scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact.
Experimental workflow A specific sequence of reusable and modular work entities covering e.g. work done in a laboratory.
Facility Office, building or other entity providing a service.
Facility operator A person working at a facility.
FAIR Acronym for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
FAIR data Data that meet standards of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability.
FAIR principles Guidelines to improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse of digital assets
FAIR publishing To give public access to a resource that meet the requirements for FAIR.
FAIR sharing To allow non-contributors access to a resource that meet the requirements for FAIR.
Findable A resource is Findable if it meets the following criteria. F1. (Meta)data are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier. F2. Data are described with rich metadata (defined by R1 below). F3. Metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data they describe. F4. (Meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource.
Foreground Means any results produced by one or more Project Beneficiaries within the framework of the Project. Foreground can include data, protocols (e.g. SOPs), models, workflows, software, computer code, Strains, Bioparts, knowledge-containing documents. Foreground is subdivided into Tools and Products.
Function Conceptual level item in the function-oriented view of process classification (See PCF). Describes “what” is done. An enterprise capability represented by a normalized grouping of processes which share a common objective, aim, or goal. Conceptual level item acting as a label to group Orchestrations. Does not apply to Services.
GA Acronym for Grant Agreement. A contract between EU and IBISBA defining the terms and conditions regarding the funding arrangement.
Granularity Grain size. Extent to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces. Level of detail.
Hackathon A longer-than-usual workshop where participants focus on a single topic for an extended period of time without breaks caused by everyday life.
Harmonize Make something the same, similar, or conform to a standard in order to assure consistency, regularity, or interoperability.
IBISBA Acronym for Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Synthetic Biology Accelerator.
IBISBA consortium The collective of IBISBA members taking part in the actions of IBISBA 1.0, PREP-IBISBA, or other IBISBA enterprise-related activity.
IBISBA Handbook A public instruction manual for the IBISBA Enterprise.
IBISBA Member A legal entity who has signed the Memorandum of Understanding or is a member of an IBISBA consortium. Typically a university, intitution, or company whos employees contribute to the IBISBA Enterprise.
IBISBA Node In the context of European distributed infrastructure, nodes are coordinated groups of facilities located within single member states. Each participant member state is represented by a node. Generally a node appoints a node chairperson who is the primary contact for the node.
IBISBA Partner See IBISBA Member.
IBISBA Service Module Modular work entities at the highest level of granularity that can be harmonized or work entities that can be accessed as individual services were defined as IBISBA Service Modules. The definition neither implies nor excludes the delivery of value to a Client.
IBISBA Terminology The IBISBA Terminology is a coherent set of words and phrases that have been agreed upon within the IBISBA Enterprise to advocate common underestanding. The ultimate goal is to harmonize the use of terms and their definitions across all IBISBA operations.
IBISBA-Hub IBISBA-Hub is a database for FAIR sharing of heterogeneous scientific research datasets, models, simulations, processes, and other research outcomes along with information about the projects, people, and organisations that contributed to their creation.
Infrastructure The set of equipment and instruments composing the foundation of operations at a particular facility.
Infrastructure operator Selfcontradictory term. Use Facility operator instead.
Innovation platform Innovation platforms provide a technological foundation, often including a set of common standards, upon which an ecosystem of third parties can develop complementary products and services to resell to consumers and other businesses.
Institution When referring to a legal entity that has signed the Memorandum of Understanding, see IBISBA Member.
Interoperable A resource is Interoperable if it meets the following criteria. I1. (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation. I2. (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles. I3. (Meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data.
Investigation A high level description of the overall area of research giving the project context, i.e. a high level concept to link related studies.
ISA The acronym stands for Investigation, Study, and Assay, which is a standard framework for describing metadata about the origin of a piece of published data. Used by many Journals.
Learn Part of the DBTL cycle where insight is deduced from experimental observations.
Metadata Data about digital objects, i.e. attributes that describe the context of the digital object. The digital object may represent a physical or immaterial asset.
Orchestration Logical level item in the service-oriented view of process classification (See PCF). Describes “how” things are done. Process compositions may include alternative process flow paths. A sequence of processes which may implement all or part of a service and be undertaken by actors within one or more communities.
Organization See IBISBA Member.
PCF Acronym for Process Classification Framework. A hierarchical structure of well-defined labels to describe the relations of work entities at different levels of granularity that describe processes.
Platform economy An emerging property of an innovation platform or transaction platform in which the benefit of using the platform increases the more it is used.
Platform operator See Facility operator.
Procedure A series of actions conducted in a certain order or manner. An ordered list of steps.
Process A sequence of tasks undertaken by actors within a single community. Logical level item in both the service-oriented and the function-oriented views of process classification (See PCF). Describes “how” things are done. Processes correspond to one of the sub-communities within the parent process composition (Orchestration). Processes includes logical actor roles as lanes. A series of actions or steps towards achieving a particular end.
Products Foreground constituted by finalized items such as BioParts or Strains. Used in the Consortium Agreement and the Grant Agreement.
Protocol curator A person charged with the tasks of guiding and training their peers to write protocols, curate protocols created within their organization, and review and improve IBISBA Protocols.
Quality Assurance Controlling the way something is done so that the output is of high quality. This includes detecting root causes of quality violations and taking measures to remove or mitigate causes of quality violations.
Quality by Design Preemptive control of variation.
Quality Control Monitoring the output and stopping output of insufficient quality. Includes detection of quality violations and rectifying quality violations by discarding, replacing, or retrying.
Refactor To clarify and harmonize the design of an existing body of knowledge, without changing its meaning.
Results Any (tangible or intangible) output of the action such as data, knowledge or information — whatever its form or nature, whether it can be protected or not — that is generated in the action, as well as any rights attached to it, including intellectual property rights.
Reusable A resource is Reusable if it meets the following criteria. R1. Meta(data) are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attributes. R1.1. (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license. R1.2. (Meta)data are associated with detailed provenance. R1.3. (Meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards.
ROI Acronym for return on investment, meaning the benefits arizing as a result of some activity, in which participation comes with an associated cost.
Round robin A method to compare two or more implementations by parallel execution on as many reference samples as there are separate implementations
Scale-up An entity of work with the objective of increasing the operational scale of a bioprocess.
Service A service is a means of delivering value to the Client by facilitating outcomes that the Client wants to achieve without the ownership of specific infrastructure costs and incompetence risks. Conceptual level item in the service-oriented view of process classification (See PCF). Describes “what” is done. A service comprises several phases or partitions of activity. A sequence of processes initiated and terminated by a client role, delivered via an interface role, and controlled or constrained by a contract.
Service boundary Service boundaries are defined by the declarative description of functionality provided by the service: it doesn’t tell how it’s going to do its job, but it tells what input is needed and what output is produced.
Service module A service module consists of a preselected set of subservices needed to achieve the goal of the service module. Each service module is associated with at least one metaprotocol. Sevice modules and subservices are modular, multipurpose, and should be reused when possible. Subservices may or may not have associated computational protocols, assays, or other protocols.
Service perimeter Same as service boundary, which is a publicly accepted term contrary to service perimeter. A perimeter specifically describes the boundary of a two-dimensional area.
Service provider The legal entity offering a service regarding the use of their facility.
SME Small-Medium sized Enterprise. A size category describing the size of commercial companies.
SOP Acronym for Standard Operating Procedure. See Protocol. IBISBA prefers Protocol.
Standardize To make things of the same type have the same basic features.
Step Activity which results in a change to an attribute of an object. Physical level item in both views of process classification (See PCF).
Study A unit of research = the central unit, containing information on the subject under study, its characteristics, and any treatments applied. A particular biological hypothesis, which you are planning to test in various ways, using various techniques, which could be experimental, informatics, modelling, or a mixture.
Subsidized access All access to services offered by facilities is subject to payment based on a transparent tarification scheme. Access is subsidized when all or a part of the full cost of access is offset by a contribution from the IBISBA infrastructure. In this case the user makes no payment or partial payment. The financing of subsidized access by the infrastructure is made, for example, in the framework of public funded projects that specifically promote subsidized access.
Synthetic biology The application of genetic engineering to generate modified or even completely new forms of life, a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.
Systems biology The computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic approach to biological research. Quantitative collection, analysis and integration of whole genome scale datasets enabling biologically relevant and often predictive mathematical models to be constructed.
TasCu ‘TasCu’ is a hierarchical collection of work entities covering at least the DBTL-cycle of strain engineering at multiple levels of granularity. Originally an abbreviation for Task Curation. Nodes organized in a tree structure describing the logical and physical layers of the IBISBA services.
TasCu editor A web application to add and edit nodes and their hierarchical organization into a tree structure.
TasCu spreadsheet A spreadsheet template used to transfer information from TasCu to the IBISBA-Hub. Sometimes called TasCu-BPM template or TasCu-Hub spreadsheet.
Task A sequence of steps undertaken by an individual actor that results in the change in state of the object being acted upon. Physical level item in both views of process classification (See PCF). Tasks within the processes do not bridge lanes. In other words, an entity of work executed by a single person or indivisible team.
Term A word or phrase having a specific meaning in a specific context.
Termbase A collection of concept-oriented terminological entries and related information such as their synonyms/equivalents.
Terminology The result of a collaborative effort to define and agree upon words and phrases to be used consistently all across IBISBA.
Test Part of the DBTL cycle where the biocatalyst is characterized and/or its performance quantified.
TNA Acronym for Trans-National Access. TNA is a particular form of subsidized access. It provides the means for users to access facility services in countries other than their own home country. The specific rules that apply to TNA are fixed by the financing authorities, usually the European Commission.
Tools Foreground that provides the means to generate a Product. These Tools can be protocols, SOPs, workflows, know-how and/or methods developed within the framework of the Project, as well as Software or Computer Code.
Transaction platform Two-sided market. Digital match making. The platform facilitates various forms of online buying and selling.
TRL Acronym for Technology Readiness Level, a status indicator classifying the tenchnological maturity of a bioprocess. The TRL may be an integer from 0 to 9, the higher the number the more mature the bioprocess.
TRL 2 Technology concept formulated. Minimum titer and production rate specified. Process flow sheet drafted. Business plan created.
TRL 3 Experimental proof of concept. Unit operation run in lab scale. Specific production rate and yield have been measured. Value proposition has been confirmed.
TRL 4 Technology validated in lab. Unit operation is repeatable and optimized in lab scale. Yield ramp-up mostly done.
TRL 5 Technology validated in industrially relevant environment. Bioprocess unit operation optimized in bench scale. Yield ramp-up completed.
TRL 6 Technology demonstrated in operational environment. Bioprocess unit operation operated in pilot (> 1 m3) scale.
TRL 7 System prototype demonstration in operational environment. Purpose-built demonstration plant operated continuously for more than 1000 hours.
Universal plan A Task list covering the union of all IBISBA services. Sometimes called the IBISBA project template.
Upstream processes Pretreatment of feedstocks, formulation of the fermentation medium, sterilisation of air/gas, fermentation medium and the fermenter, and inoculum preparation are typical processes that precede a fermentation process.
User (research infrastructure ‘Users’ of Research Infrastructures can be individuals, teams and institutions from academia, business, industry and public services. They are engaged in the conception or creation of new knowledge, products, processes, methods and systems and also in the management of projects. Teams can include researchers, doctoral candidates, technical staff and students participating in research in the framework of their studies. Synonymous with client.
USP Acronym for Unique Selling Point. Attribute, service, component, or factor that differentiates an entity from its competitors.
Virtual access Virtual access is a resource (generally a computationally-related service available on line) that can be accessed by a user at any time, without then need for supervision by an IBISBA service provider. Virtual access is usually free, but might involve a subscription payment.
Workflow An approved sequence of tasks related by output-input connections.
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