Release Overview
How curated data releases are assembled, documented, and distributed.
What is a data release?#
A data release is a curated, versioned snapshot of study data that has been standardized, quality-checked, and documented for research use. Public releases are hosted by Bridge Analytics. A data release includes:
- Cleaned and standardized data ready for analysis.
- Incremental improvements over previous releases, e.g., new participant data, additional instruments, and resolved issues.
- Versioned technical documentation provided via an official release site, including instrument READMEs.
Because data releases are provided during ongoing data collection, a periodic data "freeze" occurs to lock down which data are included in an upcoming release. Release data therefore do not include the most recently collected or in-progress data, ongoing corrections, or experimental or partially processed data.
Release cycles & cadence#
A data freeze occurs approximately 12 months after data collection begins for a given cohort. This is followed by a ~3-month period for data cleaning, validation, and preparation, after which the final curated dataset is delivered to Bridge Analytics for public release. This cycle repeats annually as new cohorts begin data collection.
(Month 0)
(~Month 12)
(~Month 15)
Responsibilities (RACI)#
Timeline RACI#
Who is responsible at each step of the release timeline.
Content RACI#
Who is responsible for release content.
See the Release Lifecycle for the stage-by-stage process, and the Template README for release documentation.