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. This may involve configuring it using open-source software made for this purpose: http://isa-tools.org/

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, meaning the column headers and row values when considered in spreadsheet format, of the investigation, study, and assay components of the archive. 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.

Uploading investigation data requires a logged-in CSSI DCC user account with permission to upload. For details on requesting permission to upload data, refer to Managing Your Account. 

You can upload a single ISA archive and save it to a folder. If you need an administrator to delete an investigation version from a folder, contact the Center for Strategic Initiatives (CSSI) Data Coordinating Center (https://cssi-dcc.nci.nih.gov/cssiportal/contactus) or click the Contact Us link at the bottom of any DCC page.

The following page family describes how to upload investigation data and request open access for your uploaded data.

Unpublishing ISA-Tab Files

After publishing a file, you may want to unpublish a version of it to remove that version completely from the CSSI DCC server.

When you unpublish a file, all access restrictions that may have been applied to it are removed from the investigation. If you decide to publish this investigation later, you must reapply any access restrictions you want.

To unpublish an ISA-Tab file

  1. Open a previously published file.
  2. Next to the version you want to unpublish, click Unpublish.
    The status of this version becomes Unpublication Request Pending. Once an administrator approves the request, the version returns to its unpublished state.