WK 35 - FAIR Data and NEON Data Discovery at the National Microbiome Data Collaborative

Session Description: Large scale research and expansion of scientific questions relies on additional data and discovery. Generating -omics data requires a wide variety of instrumentation and subject matter expertise. Pairing existing data with new results has the potential to uncover or answer pressing questions about environmental microbiomes. The National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) is collaborating with researchers to collect and share microbiome data in a standardized way to enable data discovery and access. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is an example of one of these collaborations. NEON provides >180 data products, including metagenomic products, from long term research sites with extensive characterization. The connection of NEON and NMDC enables researchers to find additional data related to their research and analyze data that has been processed in the same way. To facilitate collaborative research , the NMDC has developed two tools to assist researchers in metadata collection and data discovery that will serve as the focus of the workshop. This workshop will be split into three sections, two hands-on sections and a discussion section. In the first section, attendees will learn how to use the NMDC submission portal to complete FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and standardized metadata that are compliant for submission to the NMDC, the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), the Genomics Standards Consortium (GSC), and the Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL). This will be followed by a data search, discovery, and access section to show how to find NEON data in the NMDC Data Portal and know how to access it along with other similar data sets that could be used in analysis. The final section of the workshop will consist of a discussion about the activities that we have completed. We will also discuss researchers’ experiences with data accessions. This discussion will also include an opportunity for data submitters and data users to express their needs within their research community to make data re-use and data sharing more FAIR, accessible, and achievable.