Here you can find a brief description and example of each field you can include in the metadata file uploaded with your samples. Most of these fields are currently optional, but we do have some required fields.
Some fields, like dates, countries and authors, will be standardized so that all entries in the database are easy to process. At the moment, these are the only fields we standardize, and we will keep users updated if that changes in the future.
Please format dates as YYYY-MM-DD, use XX if unknown, ex: 2020-03-XX or 2020-XX-XX, please provide at least a year. If you have older sequences for which the date isn’t available, or legal reasons relating to releasing the date, please get in touch via submission@pathoplexus.org.
Please format authors as a string where each author is separated using a semi-colon, and a comma is used to separate first names/initials from last name, e.g. last name, first name;. Last name(s) is mandatory, only ASCII alphabetical characters A-Z are allowed. For example: Smith, Anna; Perez, Tom J.; Xu, X.L.; or Xu,; if the first name is unknown.