Uploading investigation data to the CSSI DCC Portal allows you to curate, manage, and reuse datasets in a standards-compliant way. The ISA-Tab specification 
describes this standard and how to structure your investigation data to create an Investigation-Study-Assay (ISA) archive.
An ISA archive is a compressed (.zip) file containing multiple text files and data files. Each tab-delimited text file in an ISA archive describes the structure of the investigation, study, and assay components of the archive. (Structure here means the column headers and row values when considered in spreadsheet format.) The data files correspond to each assay and are included in the archive in their native format, for example, Microsoft Excel. An ISA archive may also contain images and other files.
The Metadata Utility can facilitate the creation of the tab-delimited text files for an ISA archive. This page family describes how to create these files and validate the metadata in the Metadata Utility. The terminology in this utility reflects that these files represent an investigation. In the following panel, you can browse this page family:
