Sharing data to the AD Knowledge Portal is a multi-step process. This page provides a summary of each step. Subsequent child pages describe each step in detail.
Steps for Data Contribution
Step 1: Prepare for Data Submission: This involves submitting a Service Desk request and assembling the necessary data, metadata, and supporting information that we will ask you to submit in the subsequent steps. We’ve broken preparation for data submission into 4 smaller steps.
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Step 1.1: Submit a Service Desk Request: We recommend submitting your Service Desk request as early as possible — even as soon as you generate your data. Opening a request early helps us understand your intent to contribute and opens a direct line of communication between you and our team.
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Step 1.2: Confirm Data Sharing Documentation: All data contributors need to have the appropriate permission and authority to share data publicly. Documentation that affirms the grant’s principal investigator (PI) has the authority to share the data is required before data can be released to the AD Knowledge Portal. This may take the form of a Data Transfer Agreement (DTA) and/or a data attestation form. The AD-DCC Governance team will work with you to determine which type of data sharing documentation is sufficient.
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Step 1.3: Organize your Data – This page explains general practices for organizing data and other materials in the AD Knowledge Portal backend, which may need to be tailored to the unique needs of your study or project.
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Step 1.4: Assemble Metadata: Metadata is standardized information submitted alongside your data that makes it understandable, discoverable, and reusable. In most cases, we require three things for every set of data: the data itself, a description of the study and methods used to generate it, and structured metadata, which follows a standard schema and uses valid values defined in our metadata dictionary. This page covers the metadata template files themselves.
Step 2: Become Synapse Certified: If you do not already have one, you will be required to register a Synapse account and complete the Synapse Certification quiz prior to data upload.
Step 3: Upload your data: An AD Knowledge Portal data manager will designate private (temporary) staging folders in the Portal backend (within Synapse) to house your data during curation. They will then grant your Synapse account (or where applicable, a Synapse Team) edit access to the staging folder(s). Once these are established, you are ready to upload your project's data.
Please note that staging folders cannot be shared with journal reviewers or with the public.
Step 4: Annotate your data: This involves labeling your files with metadata so users can easily find and filter for the data they need when exploring data on the portal.
Step 5: Release data: Once your data are successfully uploaded and annotated, they will go through several checks to prepare for public release. Releases occur at a regular monthly cadence.
Other Ways to Contribute
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Community Data Contribution Program (CDCP) – Explains our fee-for-service model for sharing data not directly supported by an NIA-funded AD Knowledge Portal-affiliated program.
Who can contribute data to the AD Knowledge Portal?
The AD Knowledge Portal is a public data repository of data generated by multiple collaborative research programs focused on aging, dementia, and Alzheimer's disease (AD), funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The AD Knowledge Portal is maintained by the AD Knowledge Portal Data Coordinating Center (AD-DCC) at Sage Bionetworks. While the AD Knowledge Portal is accessible to everyone, dedicated resource storage, curation, and dissemination support are available to designated NIA-funded AD/ADRD research programs (as featured on our home page) and to Community Data Contribution Program (CDCP) participants.
Plan Your Timeline
Contributing data to the AD Knowledge Portal is a multi-stage process that moves through infrastructure setup, documentation collection, metadata validation, and release. Our team works in two-week cycles, and each stage of data ingress typically takes about one cycle to complete under normal circumstances. As a result, contributors should plan to submit their Service Desk request 8–12 weeks before they need their data to be publicly available — for example, ahead of a publication deadline, conference, or grant reporting requirement.
If your data contribution is tied to a specific publication date, conference, or other deadline, please include that date in the body of your Service Desk request. This helps our team prioritize incoming requests appropriately and flag potential scheduling conflicts as early as possible.
Keep in mind that data releases to the public portal happen on a monthly cadence (see Step 5 below), so timing your submission relative to our release schedule — not just our processing time — is an important part of planning ahead.
General Tips for Successful Data Contribution
Tips for Successful Data Contribution to Sage Bionetworks Hosted Portals
This guide provides a general framework and guiding principles for successful data contribution. Its content is relevant to sharing data as a part of any Sage-managed portal or Synapse project. It outlines the four phases of the data sharing lifecycle: Project Initiation & Data Landscape, Governance & Contract Execution, Data Upload, Curation & Quality Assurance, and Discovery, Access & Reuse. Additionally, the document defines key responsibilities for both Data Contributors and Sage Bionetworks staff alongside an extensive glossary of data-governance terms.
See Next: Step 1.1: Submit a Service Desk Request