Publishing Costs for the SPARC Portal

Sharing your data responsibly benefits you and the wider research community.

Responsible sharing accelerates biomedical discovery, enables others to validate your results, and makes your high-value datasets more visible and citable. Funders like the NIH recognize that preparing data for reuse takes effort, and they allow you to budget for these costs. Responsible data management and sharing don’t just help others — they help you as well. Well-curated, accessible data make it faster and easier for you and your team to revisit and reuse your own datasets in future projects. Sharing through SPARC also reduces the time you spend explaining your experiments and data structure to collaborators or new lab members.

The SPARC Data and Resource Center (DRC) works alongside you to maximize the value and reach of your research. When you invest in SPARC, you ensure that:

• Your data meet FAIR standards, making them easy to find, understand, and reuse — even by your own team.
• Your work is showcased on the SPARC Portal and amplified through community outreach.
• Your datasets become interactively explorable and available for advanced computational modeling o²S²PARC and online visualization.
• You receive proper credit and citations when others build on your data.

Your contribution supports the experts, tools, and infrastructure that turn raw data into lasting, reusable resources (Ruiz et al., 2025 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.expneurol.2025.115333).

In between the laboratory where data are generated and the infrastructure where data are stored are all the standards, tools, processes, and personnel to transform datasets into FAIR resources that are useful for the broader scientific community. Ruiz et al., 2025 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.expneurol.2025.115333

Share your data — extend your impact, save time, and make your research work harder for you.

One-Time Cost Model

The cost for data curation and publication is a one-time fee. Once your data is accepted and published, there are no ongoing charges due to our participation in the AWS Open Data Partnership.

We offer 3 dataset prices based on size:

Costs are provided in USD and are per dataset. When you commit to contributing 2-5 datasets, we are able to offer a 10% reduction in the per dataset cost. Beginning with your 6th dataset, a 20% discount becomes available. (* discount does not apply to the fixed cost for additional terabytes). Those contributing more than 10 datasets or datasets over 5 TB should consider including SPARC as a co-investigator .

We're committed to working with researchers to find solutions that support both scientific advancement and practical budget considerations.

Getting started

Thinking beyond your first contribution to SPARC

Data sharing is research dissemination, and you can utilize budgetary funds to support these efforts. Get more details on Data Management and Sharing Plans. Using the pricing guidelines above, please let us know how you included SPARC in your grant submission.

Together, we can build a stronger foundation for research that bridges the body and brain. We’re committed to maintaining this collaborative ecosystem — and that requires your commitment as well. Please help sustain SPARC by including us in your proposals and informing us of your plans. For larger or more complex projects, it’s especially important to connect with us early. Initiate the discussion Reach out to discuss your full submission — including the number of datasets, approximate sizes, and timelines — so we can plan the personnel and funding support needed to deliver high-quality services.

Learn more about consortia support and other services SPARC has to offer by visiting What We Offer.

What are dataset contribution funds used for?

The NIH Common Fund’s Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program set out to build a robust, high-quality data ecosystem that makes experimental research more reusable and impactful. From the start, SPARC has prioritized rigorous standards, curation, strong FAIR principles, and the development of specialized tools and resources that make complex datasets truly accessible and valuable to the community. Find our more about our sustainable open source projects

While the portal’s initial development was funded by the NIH, the SPARC program has ended. To sustain this high standard, the SPARC DRC accepts funds from researchers submitting data. These funds directly support the expert curation, maintenance, associated tools, and outreach efforts that ensure your data are shared in an impactful manner.

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Please consider including SPARC in your grants for future projects