Work to improve the quality of diagnostic methods for Q fever is being pursued in France, by the National Reference Laboratory (NRL), together with producers of available commercial kits, analytical laboratories, and with scientific collaborators. Standardization and calibration of methods are a prerequisite for the production of reliable and usable data for a network of laboratories, involved in surveillance programs as well as epidemiological studies, case diagnostics and confirmation or investigations linked to human outbreaks. The role of the NRL is also to ensure that the performance of methods by analytical laboratories, and, their harmonization across a network of laboratories, are properly maintained.