Ten Lessons for Data Sharing With a Data Commons

TL;DR

Data commons are cloud-based platforms that enable communities to securely manage, analyze, and share large datasets, accelerating research through lessons learned over a decade of development.

Contribution

The paper summarizes ten lessons learned from a decade of developing and implementing data commons for research data sharing.

Findings

Data commons facilitate secure and compliant data sharing.

Elastic cloud scalability enhances data analysis capabilities.

Lessons learned improve future data commons implementations.

Abstract

A data commons is a cloud-based data platform with a governance structure that allows a community to manage, analyze and share its data. Data commons provide a research community with the ability to manage and analyze large datasets using the elastic scalability provided by cloud computing and to share data securely and compliantly, and, in this way, accelerate the pace of research. Over the past decade, a number of data commons have been developed and we discuss some of the lessons learned from this effort.