Sharing Without Losing Control

About This Lesson

Collaboration is central to modern research, but sharing data introduces risk. You may need to share preliminary results with a collaborator before publication, give a reviewer access to supporting data, or release a dataset under specific terms. In each case, you want to share precisely what is needed while retaining control over the rest.

This lesson covers the sharing and licensing tools available on the platform. You will learn how to share investigations with other groups, set per-entity licenses, and use exports to provide data in formats suitable for external collaborators.

What You'll Learn

• How to share investigations and studies with other groups on the platform
• Per-entity licensing: choosing Creative Commons licenses for investigations, studies, and procedures
• When and how to use embargo periods to delay public access
• Data sensitivity considerations for human samples and clinical data
• How to use CSV exports to provide collaborators with structured data extracts
• How to share sequencing results while keeping raw data private

Key Concepts

• Share link: A mechanism to grant view or edit access to a specific investigation or study without adding users to your group.
• License: Each investigation, study, and procedure can carry its own license (e.g. CC-BY-4.0, CC-BY-SA-4.0, CC0). This tells downstream users what they can do with your data.
• Embargo: A period during which data is registered on the platform but not publicly visible, giving you time to publish before releasing.
• Export: CSV and ZIP downloads that let you extract structured data for use outside the platform.