Tools for collaboration
The large community of researchers using SMD participates in widespread and active collaborations. SMD's tools for sharing data facilitate collaboration and accurate communication of experimental details. To complement existing tools for organizing and annotating shared data, we have implemented a ‘data repository’ that allows users to save and share the results of data analysis (Figure 1). Users are able to save the results of data selection, filtering, transformation and analysis at each of these different steps and then specify other users or groups who should be able to view the datasets. In addition to providing a means to help users save their work and facilitate collaboration, the data repository provides a jumping-off point for various analysis tools, such as hierarchical clustering and singular value decomposition.