# How to use pretrained models and external publicly available datasets?

**URL:** https://community.drivendata.org/t/how-to-use-pretrained-models-and-external-publicly-available-datasets/11480
**Category:** DaT Parkinson's Prediction Challenge
**Created:** [August 13, 2026, 9:19am UTC](https://community.drivendata.org/t/how-to-use-pretrained-models-and-external-publicly-available-datasets/11480 "2026-08-13T09:19:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![serkanpaker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@serkanpaker](https://community.drivendata.org/u/serkanpaker)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2026, 9:19am UTC](https://community.drivendata.org/t/how-to-use-pretrained-models-and-external-publicly-available-datasets/11480/1 "2026-08-13T09:19:22Z")

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In submission, how to demonstrate it? Like compress them into submission.zip too?

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### Author: ![ishashah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f475e1/32.png) [@ishashah](https://community.drivendata.org/u/ishashah)
#### Post date: [August 17, 2026, 2:21pm UTC](https://community.drivendata.org/t/how-to-use-pretrained-models-and-external-publicly-available-datasets/11480/2 "2026-08-17T14:21:42Z")

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Hi @serkanpaker , that is correct - you should include your model weights in your submission.zip file to be able to access them to perform inference on the test data within the competition environment. [You can see an example of a submission that uses weights that are packaged in the submission here](https://github.com/drivendataorg/competition-sfmn-parkinsons-runtime/tree/main/examples/template). If you use external data to train a model but do not need it to perform inference, you do not need it to include it in your submission.zip.