Essential Elements for Sharing a Data Package
NIH HEAL Initiative Data Stewardship Group
March 20, 2025; 1:00-2:00 pm ET

The HEAL Data Stewardship Group is excited to announce the next Fresh FAIR Webinar! Please join us on Thursday, March 20 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. Eastern Time for Essential Elements for Sharing a Data Package.

Description: Effective data packaging is essential for ensuring that research data remains structured, discoverable, and reusable in alignment with the NIH HEAL Initiative’s goals. This webinar will explore best practices for data packaging across various stages of the research lifecycle, emphasizing the importance of meeting repository requirements and adhering to FAIR data principles.

Sarah Myer, MPH, a HEAL Steward, will highlight the significance of well-structured data within the NIH HEAL Initiative, explaining how data advances research within the biopsychosocial model of pain and addiction, supporting interdisciplinary collaboration and secondary reuse. Attendees will gain insights into the role of metadata in the HEAL Data Ecosystem (HDE) and its impact on data discoverability and secondary use underscoring the value of data packaging components for reusability.

Brienna Larrick, Ph.D., PMP, from the HEAL Platform, will outline the key components of a well-organized data package. The session will explain the common types of files included in a data package by providing an overview distinguishing between processed and raw data files, recommending preferred formats (e.g., CSV, TSV, JSON) for various data types, and demonstrating examples for mapping variables to ontologies and semantic standards such as Common Data Elements (CDEs).

To illustrate these concepts, the webinar will feature HEAL-specific examples of study teams that have successfully packaged and submitted datasets to repositories to illustrate effective approaches to data organization, metadata creation, and adherence to repository requirements.

Attendees will also have access to key resources, including Data Curation Costs for Submitting, the ICPSR Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving (6th ed.), and the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory Living Notebook.

A live Q&A session will follow, enabling participants to engage with experts and address specific challenges related to data packaging and submission. The webinar will conclude with a call to action, encouraging researchers to submit their datasets to HEAL repositories using best practices that enhance data accessibility and long-term usability.

Register now!