NIAID has developed a platform to help researchers find data related to allergic, infectious and immune-mediated diseases across multiple data repositories. The NIAID Data Ecosystem Discovery Portal is a centralized hub cataloging millions of datasets from over 50 sources.
Researchers can use the Discovery Portal to find data, resources, and computational tools from different repositories. This can save them time otherwise spent combing through multiple sources and help them find datasets they weren’t aware of previously.
The Discovery Portal searches within NIAID-funded repositories to promote the discovery of new research data, enhance open science, and align with findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data practices.
The Discovery Portal includes resources from infectious and immune-mediated disease (IID) and generalist repositories. Representative resources include NIAID-sponsored repositories such as AccessClinicalData@NIAID, ImmPort, and VDJServer, as well as repositories funded outside of NIAID but relevant to NIAID research areas.
Resources in the Discovery Portal include a diverse array of data types spanning multiple research domains, including -omics data, clinical data, epidemiological data, pathogen-host interaction data, flow cytometry, imaging, and other experimental data. More details about data types and data access are found in the About section on the Discovery Portal website.
Getting Started with the NIAID Data Ecosystem Discovery Portal
The NIAID Data Ecosystem Discovery Portal does not contain data itself. Instead, it contains detailed information about datasets and resources drawn from metadata. Users can then access the resources through external links.
To search within the Discovery Portal, navigate to the Discovery Portal homepage and enter keyword(s) into the search bar. You can also search with custom queries in Advanced Search or pre-built queries for common searches.
With the Discovery Portal, you can:
- Rapidly search millions of datasets across both IID and generalist repositories from the Search or Advanced Search.
- Use filters to identify research data by metadata categories including funding source, repository, conditions of access, and more.
- Learn more about the Discovery Portal from the About The NIAID Data Ecosystem page and read documentation in the Knowledge Center.