NMDC FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the NMDC
The NMDC was officially launched in 2019.
The NMDC is funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science. Our full funding statement can be found on the About Us page.
NMDC Vision: To connect data, people, and ideas to advance microbiome innovation and discovery.
NMDC Mission: To support a FAIR microbiome data sharing network, through infrastructure, data standards, and community building, that addresses pressing challenges in environmental sciences.
No, the NMDC does not store raw -omics data, however the NMDC Data Portal is referred to as a data discovery platform and it provides links to the raw data available in primary data repositories. The Data Portal does contain processed multi-omics data that has been run through the NMDC standardized bioinformatics workflows.
Visit our Community page to learn more about how researchers and organizations can collaborate with the NMDC.
The NMDC closely coordinates with DOE user facilities and the NMDC Submission Portal and metadata standards are compliant with user facility metadata requirements. The NMDC will often work with user facility researchers to make their data available in the NMDC, and when submitting a user facility proposal, researchers can indicate their interest in working with the NMDC. Learn more on the Data Integration page.
The NMDC Submission Portal and Data Portal utilize ORCiD information as the login credentials, so you do not need to create an NMDC-specific account.
Yes, the NMDC metadata requirements are more stringent than many primary data repositories, and many of the fields are directly transferable to templates used by primary data repositories such as NCBI. We recommend checking the metadata requirements of any primary data repository before starting work to ensure all required metadata fields are collected.
Email support@microbiomedata.org to discuss your specific circumstance with our team.
Our submission process still requires verification to ensure that all metadata fields are properly captured, and submitted data must also be processed by the NMDC bioinformatics workflows prior to becoming available on the Data Portal.
Our Data Use Policy outlines how to cite the NMDC and the data within the NMDC Data Portal.
The NMDC Data Portal does not contain any embargoes and all data within the Data Portal is open and available for reuse applications.
The metadata templates are available to download from the NMDC Submission Portal after inputting study information.
Contact NMDC support (support@microbiomedata.org) to discuss options.
- The NMDC Submission Portal allows users to upload their data to the NMDC Data Portal.
- Making your data available through the NMDC increases the citations of your datasets and their associated DOIs, it makes your microbiome data FAIR which is rapidly becoming an integral part of funding agency data management plans. It also allows for your data to be included in larger meta-analyses, modeling efforts, and ML/AI applications, and increases the overall visibility of your research.
There is a bulk download feature available in the Data Portal, and researchers can also utilize the NMDC API to download data.
Currently, the NMDC does not support human microbiome data, and is focused on environmental microbiomes.
Email support@microbiomedata.org with clear details about your bug or issue. Please include any relevant screenshots of the problem so we can recreate the issue on our end. The team will put in a GitHub ticket for the problem to be resolved. If you would like a response, please indicate that in your email.
You may also submit general feedback about the NMDC products to this form.
Visit our User Research webpage to learn more about NMDC’s user-centered design, and to volunteer to contribute to user research efforts!
