FaceBase is an NIH-funded, open community hub that curates and serves more than 1,100 FAIR datasets in craniofacial and dental biology. Powered by the DERIVA platform, the repository supports self-curation by researchers, integrates interactive imaging and single-cell viewers, and assigns DOIs for every dataset to ensure citation and reuse.
Why FaceBase is based on DERIVA
| Requirement | DERIVA capability |
|---|---|
| Evolving, project-defined schema | Model-adaptive interfaces auto-generate search, browse, and edit pages when tables change. |
| Self-curation at scale | Web and desktop tools validate metadata, enforce controlled vocabularies, and version large file uploads without curator intervention. |
| Proven FAIR compliance | Persistent IDs, fixity checks, and rich provenance satisfy NIDCR and publisher mandates. |
| Automation hooks | QC pipelines, DOI minting, and thumbnail generation run immediately after ingest, cutting manual effort. |
Impact to date
- 30 new contributing projects onboarded between 2019-2022.
- Over 1,100 public datasets, covering 40+ assay types and ~4.5 TB of files.
- 7,600 unique visitors and ~45,000 file downloads in a recent six-month window.
- Cited in 210 publications, including secondary analyses that revealed regulatory networks in cleft-lip development.
Example workflow
- Investigator uploads raw sequencing files and sample metadata via
deriva-cli. - Automated QC checks checksums, validates ontology terms, and flags gaps on a dashboard.
- Chaise UI allows the lab to edit records in bulk and link processed outputs.
- Release button publishes the dataset, assigns a DOI, and makes it discoverable on FaceBase and Google Dataset Search.
Lessons for other consortia
FaceBase demonstrates that researcher-driven curation is viable when tooling guides users and integrates QC early in the data lifecycle. By choosing a schema-agnostic platform, the hub accommodated new imaging and single-cell modalities without database rewrites, and DERIVA’s versioned storage preserved every update for reproducibility.
For more details see: R.E. Schuler et al., Journal of Dental Research 2022.