Data description¶
Q: What is the data description file?
This tracks administrative information about a data asset, including affiliated researchers/organizations, projects, data modalities, dates of collection, and more.
Q: How do I create the data description?
The data description is created during data transfer based on information you provide to that service and pulling information from internal resources.
Q: What is the difference between modality and platform?
Modalities are types of data being collected. A platform is a standardized way of collecting one or more modalities of data that we give a name. Platform standardization – of file formats, hardware setup, etc – enables us automatically and reliably process data with centrally managed data pipelines.
Example 1: the behavior platform leverages Harp and Bonsai to run behavioral experiments and acquire multiple modalities of data (behavior videos, electrophysiology, photometry, etc).
Example 2: We use SmartSPIM lightsheet microscopes to collect whole-mesoscale whole brain neuroanatomy data. This is a single-modality (SPIM) platform (mesoscale anatomy, SmartSPIM colloquially).
Questions for AIND users¶
Q: What platform should I use?
There is a controlled vocabulary in (aind-data-schema-models)[https://github.com/AllenNeuralDynamics/aind-data-schema-models]. Pick the one that most closely aligns with how you have collected data. If none exists, talk to Saskia de Vries or David Feng.
Q: This data is for a AIND project and not part of a grant. Shouldn’t the funder be AIND?
No. The funding for internally funded AIND or AIBS work is listed as “Allen Institute”.
Q: I got a new grant! How do I make sure this grant information will get integrated into the metadata?
Congratulations! The funding information is pulled from the Funding Smartsheet that Shelby maintains. Work with Shelby to make sure your grant is on that sheet.
What are “Institution” and “Group” doing in data_description.json?
In the future we may need to tag cloud resources based on the originating group, which may or may not be in AIND, in order to track usage and spending.
Q: What happened to the “experiment type” asset label? Why are we using platform names instead?
Formerly we used a short label called “experiment type” in asset names instead of platform names. This concept was confusing because it was difficult to distinguish from a “modality”. Most of our data contains multiple modalities. A recording session may contain trained behavior event data (e.g. lick times), behavior videos (e.g. face camera), neuropixels recordings, and fiber photometry recordings.
Anchoring browsing on data collection platforms is clearer. We will tag sessions in our metadata database to indicate which modalities are present in which sessions.