About Pennsieve for the HEAL Data Ecosystem

As part of the NIH HEAL Initiative®, the HEAL Data Ecosystem was created to accelerate sharing HEAL-generated data and results with the broad community of researchers, health care providers, community leaders, policy makers, and other HEAL stakeholders. The HEAL Data Ecosystem achieves this by empowering researchers to make their HEAL-generated data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, see HEAL Data Sharing Policy) through HEAL-compliant repositories, which are then surfaced centrally by the HEAL Data Platform, enabling HEAL data to be searched, analyzed, and used to make new discoveries. This is in line with broader efforts across NIH outlined in the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science (HEAL Data Ecosystem, May 2024).

Pennsieve and SPARC are both HEAL-compliant repositories (Pennsieve also supports SPARC’s repository - learn more about our partnership here). SPARC is the designated repository for the NIH HEAL RE-JOIN Program and the NIH HEAL PRECISION Human Pain Network. Additionally, Pennsieve and SPARC are available to accept data from any HEAL studies outside of these networks.

Why should you choose Pennsieve or SPARC for your HEAL dataset?

Multimodal, interdisciplinary datasets

• Capable of handling large file and dataset sizes*
• FAIR and HEAL-compliant
• HEAL Platform Integration

What’s the difference between Pennsieve and SPARC?

SPARC's mission and vision focuses on "Bridging the Body and the Brain" by supporting data integration within the domain of the peripheral nervous system. SPARC offers dedicated curation support to meet the SPARC Standards, integrating your data into the SPARC Knowledge Graph and providing additional outreach to the SPARC Scientific Community, increasing your data’s community impact.

If your HEAL-generated data are a good fit for SPARC, fill out the Dataset Submission Request form to get in touch with the SPARC publishing team. If your HEAL-generated data does not fall within SPARC’s discipline, you can still use Pennsieve as your HEAL-compliant repository (see: Submit a Dataset Proposal to a Repository).

How do I know which repository to choose?

If your data falls within SPARC’s domain, the HEAL Data Ecosystem encourages you to choose SPARC for your HEAL dataset.

Still not sure?

Not sure if your HEAL dataset is right for Pennsieve or SPARC? We’re here to help! Contact us through this form or at services@sparc.science.