SPARC Data Structure (SDS)

Overview

The SPARC Data Structure (SDS) is the data organisation standard developed by the NIH SPARC (Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions) programme for sharing data about the peripheral nervous system, autonomic nervous system, and organ-nerve interactions. SDS provides a standardised folder hierarchy and metadata schema for organising experimental data from SPARC-funded studies, covering electrophysiology, anatomy, connectivity mapping, imaging, and behavioural data related to peripheral nervous system function. SDS-formatted datasets are deposited in the SPARC Portal (sparc.science), which serves as the primary open data repository for peripheral nervous system research.

Structure

SDS organises a dataset into a standardised hierarchy:

dataset/
├── dataset_description.json   ← dataset-level metadata
├── subjects.xlsx              ← subject-level metadata
├── samples.xlsx               ← sample-level metadata
├── code/                      ← analysis code
├── docs/                      ← documentation
├── primary/                   ← raw data (organised by subject/sample)
└── derivative/                ← processed data

Metadata is captured in standardised xlsx templates and a JSON descriptor, with controlled vocabularies drawn from community ontologies.

Relationship to BIDS

SDS and BIDS are complementary standards addressing different nervous system domains:

Feature	BIDS	SDS
Primary domain	Central nervous system	Peripheral nervous system
Key modalities	MRI, EEG, MEG, iEEG, PET	Ephys, anatomy, connectivity, imaging
Repository	OpenNeuro	SPARC Portal
Governance	INCF / BIDS Steering Group	NIH SPARC / SPARC Consortium

Convergence efforts are underway to harmonise BIDS and SDS metadata schemas for studies that span central and peripheral nervous systems.

Connections

• Uses: NWB (electrophysiology data files within SDS datasets)

Resources

• https://sparc.science (SPARC Portal — dataset repository)
• https://docs.sparc.science/docs/sparc-data-structure (SDS specification)
• https://github.com/SciCrunch/sparc-curation (SDS tooling)