[1] The archive is part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), and run as a collaboration between the NCBI, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ).

The archive was established by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in 2007 in order to provide a repository for data produced by RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq studies as well as large-scale studies including the Human Microbiome Project and the 1000 Genomes Project.

[3] The volume of data deposited in the Sequence Read Archive has grown rapidly.

[2] Deposition of data in the SRA is mandated by most funding agencies and open access journals.

Nature Publishing Group journals require that DNA and RNA sequencing data is made available through the SRA.