10 Reasons to Share Your Data

Future scientific discoveries depend on reliable, reproducible data. Consider data deposits as an investment in the future of your field — not to mention, a preserved record in the long and winding history of scientific progress. 

You may be mandated to do so, whether by your institution, your consortium, or your funder. Many scientific governing bodies, as well as journal publications, require principal investigators to make their data public.

Cloud data storage offers peace of mind, and simplifies collaboration. Synapse stores all your research files in one place, making them accessible from anywhere with internet, for free. This means you always have a data backup, and an easy way to share data files with colleagues and collaborators.

Your data might inspire a DREAM challenge or hackathon. Public data is frequently used to contextualize and support crowdsourced challenges and hackthons to examine pressing questions in biology and medicine.

Your data can be cited easily and permanently with a DOI. Synapse can mint DOIs (digital object identifiers) for your data. DOIs can be used to track attribution, and are often requested by journals when linking data to publications.

Documenting your data thoroughly can help ensure reuse for yourself and others. After submitting your data, your data will be documented, annotated, and prepared with metadata (and if applicable, provenance) to ensure accurate interpretation by your team and other researchers.

Receive assistance from research scientists, engineers, governance experts, and data curators. Specifically, sharing your data on Synapse gives you access to Sage’s team, who can help you upload, annotate, and share your data successfully.

Control who sees your data and how. Sage’s governance team carefully considers how data should be shared, implementing various access control features across our platforms to protect sensitive data. Project sharing settings also allow you to keep a data project private between you and your lab team, and later, make the project public once you’re ready to share.

Develop new collaborations. By offering your data for public use, you are inviting others to collaborate with you and share resources or tools that may advance your work in new ways.

Public science promotes the public good. Whether because your scientific work is funded by public tax dollars, or because you believe in upholding principles like the United Nations’ ‘right to science,’ sharing your data enables discovery and experimentation, both by experienced and citizen scientists.