Overview

Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 0 min

Questions

Why submit my data to a repository?

What is data?

How do I find a suitable repository?

Objectives

Explain why data should be publicly available and what the term data means.

Explain different types of repositories and how to find a suitable one.

Why submit your datasets to a repository?

Open Science & FAIR
Reproducibility
Trail of evidence
3rd party access
Archival
Publication of paper requires it

What is data?

There are different types of data

Raw: straight from the instrument eg fastq, bam, cram
Processed: normalization, removal of outliers, expression measurements, statistics
Metadata: minimum information to reproduce the data, sample information, precise protocols

How to find a suitable repository

Types of repositories

Domain specific:
- Best choice if suitable, long-term plan, typically free of charge, maximum reach.
- E.g. ENA, ArrayExpress, PRIDE
General purpose:
- Second best, long-term plan, might cost (now or in future), good reach but less specific in metadata → more difficult for future users to judge if a dataset will be useful
- E.g. Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad
In house/institutional
- For archive/backup purpose mainly, might cost, limited reach unless also published in data catalogue

How find a domain specific repository?

Key Points

Benefits of sharing data are several e.g. reproducibility purposes, follow the Open Science directive, meet requirement from publishers.

There are different types of data e.g. raw, processed and metadata.

If possible, use a domain-specific repository since it has maximum reach in the research community.