Workshop: Satisfying NIH data sharing and management requirements with Terra and AnVIL

Description

As biomedical data grow at an exciting pace, the ability to share them in a way that is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) has never been more important. Recognizing this need for better data practices, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released a new policy (NOT-OD-21-013) that requires researchers generating NIH-funded data to create a strategy and budget for data management and sharing. This plan must include the selection of a public data repository that implements desirable characteristics like unique identifiers, metadata, free and easy sharing, security, and quality assurance. Terra, an open-source bioinformatics ecosystem that includes a repository, a Data Oversight Use System (DUOS), and an analysis platform, is an ideal solution for researchers needing to comply with this new NIH policy and is already being implemented as an approved data-sharing repository by the NHGRI’s Genomic Data Science Analysis, Visualization, and Informatics Lab-Space (AnVIL, NOT-HG-19-024). 

In this interactive workshop, participants will learn about key data-sharing practices and take a journey through the Terra ecosystem to explore the features that meet NIH’s desirable characteristics. Participants will view and engage in two vignettes that discern how Terra and AnVIL can satisfy the data needs of both a large consortium and an individual research lab. In the consortium vignette, the AnVIL team will use hands-on activities to show how they are harnessing Terra features for data sharing, management, and reproducible analysis in ways that already meet NIH’s standards. In the individual lab vignette, participants can upload and share their own mock data set and metadata. Regardless of their use case, participants will walk away with the skills and confidence to include Terra/AnVIL in their data management plan. 

By the end of the workshop, participants will learn how to: 

1. Find and use Terra/AnVIL features that comply with NIH policy requirements

2. Upload data to Terra/AnVIL

3. Make data findable and accessible to promote scientific reproducibility