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Synapse allows researchers to share and describe data, analyses, and other content. Data and analyses can be stored in many types of locations, including private servers, local hard drives, or cloud storage. Synapse provides a common interface to describe these data or analyses, where they come from, and how to use them. Synapse also provides mechanisms for adding and retrieving data, analyses, and their respective descriptions. For a comprehensive introduction to Synapse see our Getting Started guide.

The Terms and Conditions of Use fully describes the governance terms and conditions of Synapse. In order to register on Synapse, you must review and agree to the terms of the Synapse Awareness and Ethics Pledge. For more information see the complete Synapse Governance policies.

Synapse was developed with the philosophy to encourage collaboration across institutional boundaries and is therefore provided as “Software As A Service” with a single instance used by all users. This makes it easy both to discover new content and share with new collaborators. We do support private project spaces where content sharing is controlled by the individual user. In addition, Synapse has the ability to reference resources that are stored elsewhere. This allows Synapse to store metadata about the content such as annotations, descriptive wiki pages and provenance but not the actual data. Currently Synapse has specific support for files stored at URLs, on SFTP servers, on AWS S3 and arbitrary file servers (see: Custom Storage Locations).

Whether you are looking to access content or use Synapse to track your own work, start by registering for a Synapse user account. Before uploading files, you will need to take a short certification quiz that demonstrates your understanding of the ethical considerations in sharing data and the manner in which data is managed and shared in Synapse. See the Getting Started guide for tips on how to access data, create your own project, and share content with others.

This will depend if the content is public or private. If private, you will need to make sure your colleague has shared this content with you. Shared content is visible from your “Dashboard page” under the tab “Shared directly with me”. If you favorite the content (using the yellow star) it will appear under your list of favorites visible from the top of any Synapse page or on your Profile.

All public data is queryable. For more information see help on querying or from the “Search” box in the top right corner of any Synapse page.

You can browse public content in Synapse without registering. However, without an account you cannot add new content to Synapse, nor can you upload or download Files or Tablesdownload files or tables. With an account you can create Projects and Wikiscreate projects and wikis, download Open Data open data and request access to Controlled Datacontrolled data. Further, an account lets you collaborate with other Synapse users and create user teams. For more information see the User CredentialsAccount Types page.

Synapse makes it easy to share files of any sort, with whomever you choose whether a small group of collaborators or the general public. You may share raw data, summarized data, analysis results, or anything in between. We recommend using Getting started with Synapse guideQuick Start Guide for more details on how to upload and manage content.

User certification ensures that you understand your responsibilities for sharing data through Synapse, especially data derived from human participants. These responsibilities include making sure that data derived from human participants is de-identified and that all applicable privacy laws and regulations are observed. See the How to contribute data for more information.

To become a certified user, you will need to pass a brief quiz.

No. Use Sharing settings to Use sharing settings to control who can see the content you create. By default, Projects and  projects and their content are visible only to the user who created it. By using the Synapse Sharing Synapse sharing settings, you have the ability to grant other Synapse users, Synapse teams, or the public access to your Project content. You can learn more here: Sharing Settings and Conditions for Use.

Synapse stores content in Amazon Web Services, which provides a layer of security measures designed and implemented by Amazon. While Synapse is an open access site, each user has control over who may access their content by using Sharing using sharing settings.