The phrase "a key standard" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to an important or essential criterion or benchmark in a particular context.
Example: "The organization has established a key standard for evaluating the performance of its employees."
Alternatives: "an essential benchmark" or "a crucial criterion."
"Well by that definition, success in Iraq is a key standard by which to measure the war on terror.
A key standard – that 85% of patients should be treated within 62 days of an urgent GP referral for suspected cancer – had not been met, since the end of 2013, auditors disclosed.
Such a threat is a key standard for granting the injunction sought by Mr. Bush, and the court's majority wrote that Mr. Bush could not claim to be irreparably harmed when he had been certified by Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, as the winner of the state's 25 electoral votes.
A key standard in the Utah biology curriculum is to understand that biological diversity is a result of evolutionary processes.
Hashtags became a key standard for reporting crime in those cities.
In recent years, accreditors have failed to detect schools reporting fraudulent job placement rates, a key standard for accrediting organizations that oversee programs marketing themselves as career-oriented schools.
After the war, many Iranians wanted and expected more democracy and more freedom from British control, and by 1950 Mohammad Mossadegh was a key standard-bearer of these two ideas.
A key criterion for a standard plant barcode is universality, meaning that the DNA barcode should be easily recovered from all plants, ideally with a single primer pair (CBOL 2009).
Pressure is mounting on the Bank of England to raise interest rates after official figures showed household disposable incomes – a key measure of living standards – rising at their fastest rate in five years.
The effects of selumetinib in combination with a number of key standard of care agents were tested pre-clinically in human tumour xenograft models and resulted in enhanced anti-tumour activity.
Washington's concern has been that a Broadcom takeover of Qualcomm would mean that America's only player in the 5G race would be eliminated through budget cutting, leaving China to monopolize a key technology standard for a generation.
