The Investigation / Study / Assay (ISA) tab-delimited format is a general purpose framework with which to collect and communicate complex metadata (i.e. sample characteristics, technologies used, type of measurements made) from experiments employing a combination of technologies, spanning from traditional approaches to high-throughput techniques. Risa allows to access metadata/data in ISA-Tab format and build Bioconductor data structures. Currently, data generated from microarray, flow cytometry and metabolomics-based (i.e. mass spectrometry) assays are supported. The package is extendable and efforts are undergoing to support metadata associated to proteomics assays.