The MetaboLights database was officially launched in 2012. It has now successfully established itself within the metabolomics community as the first open-access, general-purpose repository. In addition to a comprehensive metabolomics data archiving and metadata collection, we are now expanding its resources by adding a metabolite reference database, called the MetaboLight Reference Layer. The MetaboLight Reference Layer is a knowledge-based resource for metabolites, which includes biological and chemical meta-data. The MetaboLights Reference Layer holds over 9200 metabolite datasets with structures, chemistry and species information from ChEBI, reaction integration with Rhea, literature in- tegration with Europe PubMed Central, pathways visualizer curated by MetaboLights team, and finally NMR & MS reference spectra. New compounds submitted and subsequently curated in MetaboLights are assigned to relevant pathways in Reactome (where possible). And their occurrence and concentration with species, organs, tissues and cell compartments, as well as their status as healthy or diseased, are highlighted. Our main challenge for future is to provide tools to assist with visualizing the metabolomics data. This includes visualising raw spectra, chromatograms or compound directly without a need to down- load the data, as well as linking the identified metabolite to our reference layer. Moreover, one of our main purposes has always been to adapt and to further develop the MSI (Metabolomics Standards Initia- tive) standards. 2012 saw the launch of a global effort to enable free and open sharing of metabolomics data. Coordinated by the EMBL-EBI, COSMOS (Coordination of Standards in Metabolomics) brings to- gether European data providers to set and promote community standards that will make it easier to dis- seminate metabolomics data through life science e-infrastructures. We work to combine highly curated reference layer with promotion of standard metabolomics submission, as well as interconnecting various metabolomics infrastructure resources. Therefore, we will be able to provide a comprehensive resource for the metabolomics community.