Basics of data sharing

If you are a scientist working with open-access wildlife disease data, we welcome you to add your data to PHAROS.

User agreement

Set up an account

  • Press "Sign up" at the top right of the navigation bar

  • Enter your first and last name, your email, and the name of your institutional affiliation

  • You will receive a verification code to your email which you will have to enter

  • Once you've signed up, you can go to the "Sign in" page and enter your credentials

Format your data

  • Data must be in CSV form and must use only the columns specified by our data structure

  • A CSV template that included all required and non-required columns can be found on the "All projects" page of your account, along with a second CSV with the column definitions

  • Data that are not formatted according to our standards will not pass the validation check and thus will not be published

Manage your project

Within your account you can:

  • Create projects

  • Edit project metadata

  • Upload and delete datasets within your projects

  • Preview the public version of your project page

Publish your data

Publishing your data adds it to the public PHAROS database, which means that your datasets and your project metadata will be publicly visible on the site to someone without an account. At the moment, publishing is a two-step process (see the "Publishing workflow" page of the user guide for more detailed instructions):

  • Step 1: When a dataset is finalized, click the "Release dataset" button on the dataset page, which will mark the dataset as ready to be published

  • Step 2: When there are one or more released datasets within a project, click the "Publish" button on your project page

  • After a project has been published, any "released" datasets will be made public, and any "unreleased" datasets will not

  • To unpublish your project, find the "Unpublish project" button in your project toolbar

Download data

  • Published datasets are downloadable by any PHAROS user with an account

  • Data can be filtered and downloaded from the data table page

  • When you press "Download" on the public data table page, the system will generate a page for your data extract and will send you an email with a link to that page

  • The data extract page will remain as a permanent record of your download; from that page you can access the citation for the data extract and download the same data again

  • In every data extract, all units will be SI units

Cite data