Accepted data

The SRA accepts genetic data and the associated quality scores produced by next generation sequencing technologies. Please refer to the File Format Guide for more specific information.

Majority of SRA submissions are submitted via SRA Submission Portal Wizard. However, certain types of SRA data must be submitted via dbGaP or GEO databases.

Please refer to

• dbGaP Submission Guide - submit human data that require controlled access
• GEO Submission Guide - submit functional genomic studies

Submitting via SRA Submission Portal Wizard

1. Log in to the SRA Submission Portal Wizard.
2. Create new SRA submission (click on the button New submission).
3. Register your project (Bioproject) and biological samples (Biosamples) if you did not register them before at BioProject and BioSample databases, respectively, or in other Submission Portal Wizards. Please refer to the SRA-specific guidelines here.
4. Submit SRA metadata - information that will link your project, samples/experiments and file names. Please refer to the SRA Metadata Overview.
5. Upload sequence data files. Please refer to SRA File Upload help.

Help links:

Human data

Before depositing human data into the public SRA database make sure that you have consent from the donating individual to make this data available in an unprotected database. Do not transmit unconsented human data intended for dbGaP submissions to the public SRA database. Please refer to our dbGaP submission Guide.

Metagenomic data

Human metagenomic studies may contain human sequences and require that the donor provide consent to archive their data in an unprotected database. If you would like to archive human metagenomic sequences in the public SRA database please contact the SRA and we will screen and remove human sequence contaminants from your submission.

Submission Portal (SP) vs. Sequence Read Archive (SRA)

The Submission Portal provides convenient web wizards for data submissions to various NCBI databases. After initial data validation, SP facilitates deposition of the data into target databases, such as the SRA. The target database performs additional validation and may or may not return error messages reflected in SP's interface. Submission Portal Home page: https://submit.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.

The SRA database stores all data and provides user interface for editing submissions directly. Log in to the SRA User Interface: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra_sub/sub.cgi

Contact SRA staff

Before contacting SRA staff for assistance please visit our SRA Submission Portal Troubleshooting Guide.

Please provide your submission's temporary ID in the form of SUB# in your messages.

Email sra@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for help.