Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Editorial
. 2021 Apr;595(7):847-863.
doi: 10.1002/1873-3468.14067.

Sharing biological data: why, when, and how

Affiliations
Editorial

Sharing biological data: why, when, and how

Samantha L Wilson et al. FEBS Lett. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

Sharing data has a crucial role in the advancement of biological science. The use of different types of data within and between scientific fields complicates establishing a single standard for making data publicly accessible. To address this difficulty, we make specific suggestions on how to share different kinds of biological data, including genomics data, proteomics data, microscopy and imaging data, and structural biology data. We provide suggestions for specialist and general repositories for depositing your data. We also provide a checklist to ensure that you share your data in standards consistent with the Findable, Accessable, Interpretable, Reuseable (FAIR) guiding principles for data management.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:. You should share raw images, corrected images, image-based readouts, analysis pipelines, and comprehensive metadata.
While sometimes challenging, this process will ultimately increase the value of your data. Figure made with BioRender.

References

    1. Wilkinson MD, Dumontier M, Aalbersberg IJ, Appleton G, Axton M, Baak A, Blomberg N, Boiten J-W, da Silva Santos LB, Bourne PE, et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data 3, 160018 (2016). - PMC - PubMed
    1. McMurry JA, Köhler S, Washington NL, Balhoff JP, Borromeo C, Brush M, Carbon S, Conlin T, Dunn N, Engelstad M, et al. Navigating the phenotype frontier: The Monarch Initiative. Genetics 203, 1491–1495 (2016). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shefchek KA, Harris NL, Gargano M, Matentzoglu N, Unni D, Brush M, Keith D, Conlin T, Vasilevsky N, Zhang XA, et al. The Monarch Initiative in 2019: an integrative data and analytic platform connecting phenotypes to genotypes across species. Nucleic Acids Research 48, D704–D715 (2020). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Haendel M, Su A, McMurry J, Chute CG, C M, B G, C W, S M, H H, Peter R, M H, M B, D S, M M-T, G J, H L, P M & T C FAIR-TLC: Metrics to Assess Value of Biomedical Digital Repositories: Response to RFI NOT-OD-16-133 10.5281/zenodo.203295. - DOI
    1. McMurry JA, Juty N, Blomberg N, Burdett T, Conlin T, Conte N, Courtot M, Deck J, Dumontier M, Fellows DK, et al. Identifiers for the 21st century: How to design, provision, and reuse persistent identifiers to maximize utility and impact of life science data. PLOS Biology 15, e2001414 (2017). - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources