Contributing to SPARC

The SPARC Data and Resource Center welcomes contributions from the diverse scientific community interested in bridging the body and the brain. Our mission seeks to advance scientific understanding and improve clinical outcomes by providing a leading platform for integrating data, knowledge, computational modeling, and mapping of the peripheral nervous system, its CNS interactions, and related physiological processes.

When you publish your datasets and computational models on the SPARC Portal, you gain significant professional advantages that extend far beyond simple data storage. Your research immediately gains enhanced credibility, as resources shared on the SPARC Portal meet the highest standards for data sharing and reproducibility. If you're planning your next research proposal, please consider including SPARC. Data sharing is research dissemination.

Highest quality

SPARC Datasets demonstrate your commitment to open science and modern research practices.

• Exceptional flexibility: While most repositories are modality-specific, SPARC accepts an unusually broad range of data types so you can present your research as a cohesive product by including multiple types of data in one location.
• Proven Expertise: SPARC data curation and management have extensive experience and will work directly with you to expertly handle complex, multi-modal datasets in a truly useful and meaningful way.
• Play FAIR: SPARC ensures that your data becomes - and stays - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable - readying your data for integration and positioning it to make the greatest contribution it can. SPARC is here to stay
• Future-proof: Your data and models can now be readily reused by your lab and others. AI-ready formats ensure your data remains relevant, and our AWS Open Data Partnership enables cost-free storage and access for all.

Maximize Impact

Making your data FAIR enhances its research impact. SPARC creates meaningful cross-platform visibility by connecting your published article and dataset to the broader SPARC ecosystem, enhancing discoverability by readers looking for articles with high-quality, accessible datasets, potentially boosting your citations, leading to reuse, and opening new collaborative opportunities.

• Integrate to amplify: your FAIR data and models are integrated into SPARC’s comprehensive knowledge infrastructure, making you and your dataset easier to find and discover, broadening dissemination beyond posters and papers.
• Get credit: SPARC links your ORCID and utilizes DOI mechanisms for datasets, protocols, and code. Now, all aspects of your work can and should be cited and linked to you - giving you the credit you deserve.
• Measure your impact: SPARC uses methods to track dataset citations in papers, protocol views and use as well as dataset download metrics to characterize your benefit to the field.

Be at the forefront

Maximizing reuse leads to unexpected discoveries. SPARC is committed to growing and evolving with your research needs, helping you and the PNS community stay at the forefront of technological advancements.

• Enhanced collaboration: Your work is now discoverable by communities you might not otherwise connect with, enabling broader scientific discourse and fostering unexpected collaborations that can drive your research in new directions.
• Community-wide datasets: Contributing to broader, community-accessible data resources
• Cutting edge tools and resources: The SPARC Portal is an ecosystem of resources for exploring and using data in situ. SPARC Apps include anatomical mapping, connectivity exploration, and computational modeling
• Commitment to sustainability We’ll be here to grow with you.

Ready to contribute?

By submitting a Dataset Submission Request you are directly connected with our Publishing Team who will help you kick off the process. The cost for data curation and publication is a one-time fee. Once your data is accepted and published, there are no ongoing charges. SPARC accepts funds from those submitting data to defray curation, repository, maintenance, and other operating costs.