Frequently Asked Questions

KeyWord(s): VisCom (Visualization Community)

What is Visualization Community?

• Visualization Community is a safe environment where you can explore public research visualizations, learn how to use ProteinPaint/GenomePaint, and even create visualizations that can be privately or publicly accessed from your own dataset.

How does Visualization Community work?

• VisCom is hosted in St. Jude’s cloud environment so there is no application to download. It only requires a computer and internet connection and is completely free for non-profit/academic use. Your data set must be hosted on St. Jude’s HPC in a specific directory outlined in our Manage your Data section or have a URL to access the data.
• You will not incur any costs except in the following situations:

When data driving a visualization is stored in St. Jude Cloud Genomics Platform or DNAnexus, a monthly fee will be incurred for storage costs. See your DNAnexus billing information for the cost per GB.

What do the visualizations represent?

• The visualizations represent the integration of high dimensional genomic or proteomic data sets or the summarization of such data sets .

Can I create my own visualizations?

• Yes, users have access to create visuals once they sign up for an account. Visualizations cannot become public until they are assigned to a team where a PI or Team Lead must approve through our internal workflow. To be added to a team, you must contact support@stjude.cloud.

Can I share my visuals with others?

• Yes, you may share your visualization(s) once your PI or team lead approves. We can share the direct link administratively, if the visualization is still private, on request at support@stjude.cloud.

Can I keep my visualizations private?

• Yes, we have an access control workflow where you can create visualizations which will remain private until you get approval from the team PI or Team Lead to make it public.

Can I use these in a publication?

• Yes, we encourage you to use these figures in your publications. We currently have published visualizations in over 11 prestigious journals including, but not limited to, Nature, Cancer Discovery, Blood, and Cell Reports. You may search for a journal by entering a key word in our search engine.

Do I have to upload my own PDF or what do I need to generate the interactive visualization?

• You do not need to upload a PDF. You will signin to your account and use one of our two editors: Easy View or Traditional Code. Easy view allows you to render visualizations without knowing the code block. Traditional code is encouraged for more advanced users who know how to develop the code blocks.

What is the code block that shows with each visualization?

• Visualizations can be enabled to show the code block that is used to create it. This is enabled for educational purposes.

Can I access the data used to generate the visualizations?

• You can access the data within each Community on the ‘Data tab’ or by clicking the data source icon above each individual visualization.

What is a community?

• A community is a platform within VisCom that allows teams (and/or multiple users) to share visualizations related to the same research.
• For example, Audacious Goals Initiative (AGI) - Retina provides a platform about retinal diseases that highlight studies and research across multiple labs. Not only are the labs studies showcased, but the data supporting the visualizations are accessible.
• This platform can be empowering to share data, showcase visualizations, and propel discoveries. All communities have a logo and description that is tailored for that community’s initiative.
• Please email support@stjude.cloud that you are interested in creating a community. Our admin team will reach out with the next steps. In general, we will want to set up an interview to understand your research and how you develop your data. Then, we will begin to roadmap the project so that we can get your branding (logo, description, and necessary data) completed. We will need access to your studies (publications, abstracts, etc) and then our team will work on how to get your visualizations in VisCom by providing one-on-one assistance, including a demonstration so that you can also develop visualizations on your own.

What is a collection?

• A collection is a setting where a user or team can group a set of visualizations to be viewed together. For example, a user may want to group a cohort of visualizations by data type or disease.
• The collection will display as shown here. A collection can remain public, private, or private but with a direct link.
• This can be a way to share visualizations in bulk by using our direct link setting, if all visualizations remain private. Or this is a way to share a collection of visualizations publicly for a direct purpose.
• Please email support@stjude.cloud with the list of visualizations you want grouped into a collection, including a description for the landing page. If they are private, a direct link will be given to share with others or for individual use.