Synapse is a collaborative research platform where you and your team can share, organize, and discuss your projects. You can access Synapse through a web browser. We also provide access to Synapse features and services for programmers through a REST API, Python client, command line client, and R client.
Synapse is a technology platform that allows researchers to aggregate, organize, analyze, and share scientific data, code and insights. Synapse is designed to integrate seamlessly with your analytical workflow. Therefore, options to download data are available in the R client, command line client and Python client.
Synapse hosts many research projects and resources. It also hosts crowdsourced competitions, including DREAM Challenges. Sage Bionetworks provides Synapse services free of charge to the scientific community through generous support from various funding sources.
Synapse is a collaborative research platform dedicated to supporting large-scale pooling of data, knowledge, and expertise across institutional boundaries to solve research problems. Synapse helps scientists solve a series of problems:
Finding and using relevant data - It can be difficult for scientists to find and access data and resources generated by others, even within the same organization. Synapse provides a central registry for scientific data and results, where data can be annotated and queried even if components of a study reside in different systems.
Understanding analysis workflows - Synapse is built with the understanding that most analytical research is experimental and ad hoc, with hardened analysis methods only emerging over time. Tracking who has run what version of code on what version of the data immediately helps projects run more smoothly, and ultimately enables reproducible workflows that allow others to build off of prior work.
Supporting genome-scale analysis - Analyzing large datasets is currently limited to those with access to significant computational resources and IT support. Synapse facilitates a computational model where code and users can move to the data, wherever it is stored.
Forming and maintaining productive collaborations - Most scientists tend to start a research effort from scratch rather than elaborate on work in an unknown state. Synapse helps scientists track what work has already been done in a particular area and create and sustain active collaborations in which research results are published online as they are generated.