While Synapse’s organizational tools (folders, tables, etc.) are used for uploading and managing data, it also offers tools for curating and viewing your own data, as well as other data already stored in Synapse.
The main curation tool for your own data is creating metadata. This involves annotating your data with standardized information in order to give it context—data about the data, if you will. Metadata is what allows data in Synapse to be searchable, discoverable, accessible, re-usable, and understandable to others, including those who were not involved in the data generation process. Metadata can be descriptive (i.e., the name of the file), administrative (i.e., provenance information), or research-based (i.e., information about the sampling and handling of data).
Learn about creating metadata here.
Other tools for curating data include views, datasets, and versioning.
You can use a view to:
Search and query many files, tables, projects, and submissions at once
View and edit file or table annotations in bulk
Group or link files, tables, projects, or submissions together by their annotations
You can use a dataset to:
Collect and distribute a set of files generated from the same study or project
Create a single item to represent a group of files that exist across disparate projects or folders
Learn all about views and datasets here.
Versioning is a way to save new copies of your work each time you make a change.
Learn all about versioning here.