Data fully utilized by the community resources promote progress rather than repetition. Effective data sharing can accelerate the transition from data to actionable knowledge, yet barriers to data sharing remain, both technological and procedural. The DELSA community has tackled the sharing barrier by creating a multi-omics metadata checklist for the life sciences. The checklist and associated data publication examples are now jointly published in Big Data and OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology. The checklist will enable diverse datasets to be easily harmonized and reused for richer analyses. It will facilitate data deposits, stand alone as a data publication, and grant appropriate credit to researchers. We invite the broader life sciences community to test the checklist for feedback and improvements.