Overview of the data submission process

Before submitting data, each contributor should work with the DCC staff to create a data agreement. This will specify the file formats you should use for your project's data files and the metadata that describe these data files.

Once the data agreement is finalized and your data archive has been created, you can submit data to the DCC using these steps:

Create a DCC submission account and log in.
Create a project entry.
Submit the data archive to the project.
Verify that the submission was accepted.
When notified by the DCC, approve your data track(s) in the browser.

Creating an account/logging in

Prior to submitting data, you must first create a login account. To do so, click the "Sign up" link on the Data Submission home page. Fill in the text boxes, then click the "Sign Up" button. An acknowledgement message will be sent to the email address you indicated; click the URL in the message to activate your account and display the login page.

Once you've activated your account, you can directly log in to the Data Submission website in the future by clicking the "Log in" link on the home page.

Creating a project

Before submitting data to the DCC, you must first create a DCC project with which the data will be associated. Subsequent data sets can be loaded to the same project instance or added to a new project.

To create a project, click the "New Project" menubar link, enter the project name in the text box, and click the "Create" button. You will then be prompted to load your data archive into the project (see "Loading data into a project"). If you are not yet ready to load data into your new project, click the "Cancel" button.

Loading data into a project

After creating a new project, you will be prompted for a file, URL, or FTP site from which the project data should be loaded. Note that your data file must be in one of the standard archive formats accepted by the submission website: .zip, .tar.gz, .tgz, or .tar.bz2.

You may optionally use the FTP space provided if you wish. Any FTP client can be used to upload your archive to your FTP space. The FTP login, site, and port are visible in the ftp link shown on the upload page. Use your same login and password for FTP. Archives with the correct extension that have been uploaded to your FTP space will appear in the dropdown list on the upload form. Simply choose the desired archive. You may need to click refresh after uploading your archive to your FTP space.

Once you've specified a source for your data, clicking the "Submit" button will automatically upload, expand, validate, and load into the database your data archive. While the data is loading, the project webpage will display a green status bar -- this disappears when the load is complete. If you are manually stepping through the load process, click the "Validate" and then "Load" links on the project page to finish the submission process on your data archive.

If a problem is encountered while submitting your data, the webpage will display an error message at the bottom of the page and the data archive status column will list the submission step that failed. In this situation, you must create an archive containing corrected versions of the problem files and resubmit these data to the project. Feel free to contact the DCC staff for assistance if any error messages are unclear.

To load data into a previously created project, click the "My Projects" menubar link to list your projects, then click the project in the "Name" column to display information about that project. Click the "Submit Data" link to load a data archive into that project.

Viewing/editing projects

To view a list of the projects in your account, click the "My Projects" menubar link. This page lists all of your active projects, the current status of each, and the date/time when each was last modified. You can edit any of the projects in the list by clicking its link in the "Name" column, which displays the individual project details page. (If you have only one project, clicking the "My Projects" link will take you directly to the details page for that project.)

On the project details page you can remove ("Delete Project" link) or rename ("Rename Project" link) a project. You can add a new data archive to the project ("Submit Data" link) or remove an existing data archive by clicking the "Delete" link to the right of the archive's status column. If the most recently submitted data archive (i.e. the archive at the top of your list) has not been validated and/or loaded, you can finish the load process by clicking the "Validate" and "Load" links.

To display a list of all the projects present on the DCC server, click the "All Projects" menu bar link. Although you will be able to view details about other submitters' projects, you will not be able to edit or remove projects or data that do not belong to you.

Changing your account profile

Click the "Change Profile" menubar link to view or edit your account information. The login, name, investigator, and institution information can be changed by directly editing the text boxes and then clicking the "Save" button.

To change the password for your account, click the "Change Password" link at the top of the Profile page. Enter your new password into the text boxes, then click the "Submit" button. A notification of the change will be sent to your email address, and you will be required to log in again using the new password.

The email address associated with your account can be changed by clicking the "Change Email" links at the top of the Profile page. Fill in the new email address, then click the "Update Email" button. A verification message will be sent to the new email address; click the URL in the message to activate the new address.