Skip to main content
Dataerai can pull clinical studies from ClinicalTrials.gov — the U.S. National Institutes of Health registry of clinical studies — into one of your projects as metadata-first assets. The study’s metadata — title, brief summary, lead sponsor, start date, status — is copied into Dataerai so it’s searchable and shareable alongside your own data. The record is not copied into your storage: clicking Download on an imported asset fetches the study’s machine-readable record directly from ClinicalTrials.gov.
Imported assets are metadata-first: they describe and link to data that lives on ClinicalTrials.gov. Nothing is stored in your Dataerai allocation, so importing doesn’t consume your quota.
One ClinicalTrials.gov study (an NCT id such as NCT00000102) imports as one asset. ClinicalTrials.gov is a registry — the study record itself is the data, not a bundle of files — so the asset’s Download fetches the study record as a structured JSON file from the public API (https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies/<nctId>?format=json), served anonymously over HTTPS, rather than opening the human-facing study web page.

​
Search ClinicalTrials.gov

Open the Import from ClinicalTrials.gov page and enter a search term, then Search.
  • The search is free text and matches study titles and content — try diabetes, melanoma, or a sponsor name.
  • Results show Title, Type, and Status (a study has no file count to show, so its recruitment status is surfaced instead), with the NCT id and start date under each title.
  • Use Per page to trade clicks for a longer page; the result count reflects the full match set.
ClinicalTrials.gov pages deeper results with an opaque cursor rather than a numeric offset, so only the first page of results is addressable from the import screen. Narrow your search term to surface the studies you want on page one.

​
Select and import

1

Select studies

Tick the studies you want — click a row, or press Space or Enter on it, to toggle its checkbox. The header checkbox selects or clears everything on the current page; your selection is kept as you page through results.
2

Choose the destination project

Paste the UUID of the project that should own the new assets into the Import into project field.
3

Import

Click Import. A single Import result panel summarizes how many studies were imported (and assets created), plus any that failed and why.
Download fetches the study’s record as JSON directly from ClinicalTrials.gov’s public API — the machine-readable record that is the study’s data. The bytes are served anonymously over HTTPS and never pass through your Dataerai storage.
Because imported assets point at ClinicalTrials.gov rather than your own storage, their records are only available while the study is. If you need a durable copy under your control, download the record and upload it as a regular asset instead.

​
Next steps

Metadata-first assets

How assets that describe data elsewhere work in Dataerai.

Import from Zenodo

Pull public records from Zenodo the same metadata-first way.

Organize into collections

Group imported studies alongside your own data.

Search & discover

Find imported studies by title, type, and metadata.