Brokering SARS-CoV-2 Data¶
Data brokering is the act of submitting data to ENA on behalf of another person/institute. In many cases a centralised national brokering facility is the most efficient means of data management at large scale.
In order to become a data broker, you must apply for brokering permissions to be added to your account. To apply, email virus-dataflow@ebi.ac.uk, providing:
some background: how you came to be a broker and who you are brokering on behalf of
expected data volume: how much and how frequently you expect to submit
a broker name and short description: this will appear in our databases
Regular Accounts vs Broker Accounts¶
Submitting via a regular account results in affiliations linked to your Webin account being propagated into submitted objects. You can update your webin account settings through the Webin Submissions Portal.
As we expect that brokers will submit on behalf of others, having a broker account opens up some extra options to define the center name on a per-object basis:
interactive submission: a new ‘center name’ tab become available
programmatic submission: define
center_name=
in each element of the submission (hint: wherever alias can be defined, center name can be defined). e.g.<SAMPLE alias="sample_alias" center_name="centre_name">
Webin-CLI and Webin-CLI-REST: ‘authors’ and ‘address’ fields can now be used. The author list can be a comma-separated list. Example:
AUTHORS Bloggs J., Doe J., Claus S.
ADDRESS Nowhereville, US
Note
Center names are free text and are not validated on the ENA side. There is no need to pre-register each center.
The difference between the two submission account types is most apparent in our sample display:
Sample Display : regular account
SAMEA8697319 on the ENA Browser
Sample Display : broker account
SAMEA9079967 on the ENA Browser
Location¶
The address provided within the Webin account is used to populate the RL
lines within EMBL files, during assembly submission. Again if you have a broker account, you can specify the address by providing this in the manifest files. If not provided, then it is automatically retrieved from the Webin account.