Publishing your workspace as a Community Workspace in the Researcher Workbench

Researchers who would like to share their workspace projects with all other registered All of Us Researcher Workbench users can do so by publishing them as community workspaces.

Community workspaces are accessible via the featured workspace collection and are shared as read-only workspaces for the entire Researcher Workbench community. Community workspaces are listed within the ‘Featured Workspace’ menu in the Researcher Workbench.

Unlike tutorial workspaces, demonstration projects, and phenotype libraries, community workspaces are NOT curated by the Data and Research Center (DRC). These workspaces are curated by Researcher Workbench users. Any data- or code-related questions must be directed to the community workspace authors, who provide contact information in the “About” section of the workspace.

These workspaces are NOT funded by the DRC or by the community workspace owner. Any costs associated with the workspace, including storage or compute costs, will be incurred to Workbench users after duplicating and running the community workspace. Costs are incurred to these users via their linked credits or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) billing account.

Community workspace owners reserve the right to edit and alter the workspace at any time once it is published as a community workspace.

How to publish your workspace

Publishing your project as a community workspace is an easy process and allows you to share your project widely with other registered Researcher Workbench users.

1. Review and ensure compliance with the requirements for publishing your workspace as a community workspace.
2. Navigate to the “About” section of your workspace.
3. On the right hand panel, select “Publish.
   • Note: You must be a workspace owner in order to publish a workspace.
4. Review and attest to publishing guidelines, then select “Confirm.”
5. Your workspace will automatically appear in the “Community Workspaces” section of the featured workspaces.
   • Note: When your workspace is published, a blue “CW” icon will display on the workspace tile.

Requirements for publishing your workspaces

To publish your workspace project as a community workspace, you must adhere to the following requirements.

• Ensure no harmful or discriminatory language is used within the workspace.
• Provide contact information in the “‘About”’ section of the workspace, such as the email address for the lead author or the URL to the lab’s website.
• Receive permission from workspace collaborators to share the workspace project, if applicable.

If your workspace is found to violate any of these requirements after publication, we reserve the right to remove it as a community workspace without contacting you first.

Recommendations for publishing your workspace

We encourage you to review your workspace prior to publishing as a community workspace. Below are some recommendations to prepare your workspace for publishing:

• Make a duplicate of your workspace and share your duplicated version as the community workspace.
  • This gives you the ability to share your project as a community workspace (the duplicated version) and to continue working on your project (the original version) without impacting the community workspace. 
• Provide a short but informative workspace title. We recommend a brief but informative 5-6 word title highlighting your project area. If your workspace is related to a manuscript, provide a title that is reflective of the manuscript title.  
• Test the workspace by running your analysis to ensure no obvious errors exist with your code before publishing the workspace.
• Save files to the “Notebooks” folder in your workspace bucket, which is automatically duplicated when making a copy of a workspace.
  • This ensures all critical files are retained in the “Notebooks” folder when the community workspace is duplicated by another Researcher Workbench user. 
• Format notebooks for readability by using headers and markdown text to explain what your code is doing.
  • • This makes it easier for users to follow along and understand your analysis steps. You can use the Data wrangling in Python featured workspace as an example for using headers and markdown text.

How to unpublish your workspace

If you would like to unpublish your workspace, please contact our support team at support@researchallofus.org. Please include the workspace URL and reason for unpublishing the workspace in your email correspondence. All workspace owners will be notified via email when a workspace has been unpublished. 

FAQs about Community Workspaces

• Who is able to publish a workspace?
  • Any workspace owner can publish the workspace. When a workspace is published, all owners of the workspace will be notified via email. 
• Do other Researcher Workbench users have access to the workspace as owners when a workspace is published?
  • No. All other registered users will only have “reader” access to the workspace. 
• Will other user activity be charged to my All of Us credits or billing account?
  • No. All other registered users will only have “reader” access to the workspace. They cannot edit or share the workspace and can only duplicate the workspace. 
• Can I still edit the workspace once it has been published?
  • Yes. As long as you have writer or owner access to the workspace, you can edit the workspace at any time. The changes will be reflected in the workspace.