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For example, a single Western blot image is typically not key data, because it can be used to answer just a handful of questions, typically all related to the protein that was assayed, and it is difficult to combine this information with lots of other Western blots to create a resource that can be mined. On the other hand, a collection of 5 whole slide images of patient tumor sections would likely be key data, because there are lots of questions that could potentially be asked of the data that were not examined in the study that generated in the data.
As a rough rule of thumb, you might ask yourself - if I was not doing this experiment myself, would I still want access to the raw data to combine it with other data or to ask my own questions about the data? Or would a figure in a publication suffice? If the former, it’s probably key data. If the latter, it’s probably optional.
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