Welcome to the ARK Portal docs site!
This site exists to help orient you to the portal and use it with ease to make the most of your experience.
What’s here for you?
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Read about the background of the portal and how it fits into the bigger data-sharing picture
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Get familiar with the basic structure and components of the portal and how data is stored
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Learn how to navigate the portal to explore and access data
What do you need to get started?
So, before you dive in, here’s a breakdown of what you need to get started using the portal:
Exploring data
Thanks to the open science principles that the portal is built on, anyone can browse its content! Nothing needed to explore—just go right ahead (and remember to use this site for help).
Synapse is the backend and datastore of the ARK Portal. You can read more about Synapse here.
Downloading data
If you want to download data, you will need to register for a Synapse account and, in doing so, agree to the Synapse Terms and Conditions of Use.
Once you have created a Synapse account and have been granted data access through a Data Access Request, you are ready to download the data. You can find the Download Options in the upper right of the file tables found in Datasets and the All Data view.
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Export Table: Download a csv or tsv file with filenames and associated annotations
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Add To Download Cart: Add files to a cart to modify or download later. Note, this is a great way to determine the size of the data you have selected.
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Programmatic Options: Command Line, R, or Python code can be utilized for downloading files directly. Learn the basic commands for installing Synapse API Clients.
Manually downloading data through the Synapse website is capped at 5 GB or 100 files per download. Larger downloads can be performed programmatically using a Synapse API Client.
Using data
Data on the portal is available for General Research Use (GRU), with no embargo on publications. If you plan to use any data downloaded from the portal in any publications, whether it is open access data or controlled access data, you must include an official acknowledgement of the data contributors. To learn more and find and pre-written acknowledgement statements please visit Data Use & Acknowledgement.