The odc-sci.org is a community-based data repository for spinal cord injury (SCI) research built on FAIR data sharing principles. Since its initial steps in 2018, odc-sci.org has been increasingly utilized by the SCI community, currently hosting 140 active datasets from 299 users across 62 distinct laboratories. Responding to the increasing mandate by publishers and funding agencies to make research data available, the odc-sci.org has initiated the implementation of a publication mechanism that considers both the needs of the community and the FAIR principles. To ensure adherence to community standards, we developed data specifications and an editorial process constituted by members of the SCI research community. Briefly, users initiate the data publication process by requesting a digital object identifier (DOI). This triggers a first review by two members of the editorial board, who assess whether the data is within the scope of odc-sci.org and give recommendations for improving metadata information associated with the dataset. Next, a team of data curators with background in SCI and data science research reviews the format and content of the dataset and data dictionary, aided by software that validates the dataset against odc-sci.org data specifications. Once the data team and users have finalized data curation, the Principal Investigator of the submitting laboratory reserves the right to make data available and release the DOI to the public with a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY). Once made public, odc-sci.org users are able to find a citation page including metadata information and access the curated dataset and data dictionary.