INCF Open Neuroscience Award!
Registration: 1 July 2024 - 20 October 2024
Start: 21 October 2024
End: 31 January 2025
INCF is committed to furthering engagement between young researchers and the many global neuroscientific research infrastructures which already exist to support them in their work. To this end we are proud to introduce the INCF Open Neuroscience Award. This award of 10,000 USD is to encourage students and early-stage researchers to engage with the resources provided by neuroscience repositories developed by the world’s large-scale brain initiatives listed below, as well as provide valuable feedback to the repositories about their usability and FAIRness. The ONA will provide the repository maintainers with independent assessments of their research infrastructures, and will promote data reuse and collaborative science.
Entrants will design a project necessitating the use of at least 2 repositories developed by the international large-scale brain initiatives. These projects need to
- Evaluate the chosen repositories & infrastructures via cross-platform analysis
- Provide feedback on these resources
To constrain the possible project space that applicants can choose from, we are proposing four predetermined user journeys, listed below. Participants are expected to align their project with the objectives of one (1) specific user journey, demonstrating the feasibility of similar research projects given the resources available.
Participating partners
List of user journeys
1. Parkinson’s / Longitudinal Data:
Search for datasets that have Parkinson’s Disease patients - and if possible longitudinal data (brain imaging and others)- Once infrastructures have been found (Findability) - find the data that can be downloaded that have cognitive, neuroimaging, demographics and possibly genetic data
- If the download of some data need a data usage agreement, find sign and return such agreement
- Find which legal and ethical constraints are associated with re-use of the data, and what kind of acknowledgements are required
- Obtain the data dictionary that describe in details the downloaded data (and if possible with unique identifiers of terminology with linked data)
2. Complex Multimodal Data Sharing:
Sharing complicated multimodal data – reconstructed single cells with electrophysiological/genetic characterization. Need for proper registration to anatomical template and organization of the cells.- There may not be existing repository infrastructure which meets this need
- Another option:
- Uploading monkey brain data to repository from particular brain areas, requiring a lot of annotation
- G-Node
3. EU neuroimaging data in Scientific Data:
An EU researcher wants to publish a data set with brain imaging data from individual health human subjects in the journal Scientific Data.- Data can be shared in compliance with EU law (General Data Protection Regulations)
- Scientific Data requests storing data in a public repository.
- GDPR requires protection of data that contain biometric and health information such as single subject brain images - even when name, address, birthdate and other primary identifying information (such as faces) have been removed. The data are still considered personal data and require data protection by design and by default. The data controller is liable and is required to demonstrate appropriate protection.
- Repository needs to provide
- Access control
- Data sharing agreements
- Data access to reviewers without disclosing their identity to authors
- Long term persistence and preservation
- Stable persistent identifiers
4. Deep Learning on Large-Scale MEG/EEG Datasets :
Finding large-scale MEG/EEG datasets to run neural networks or deep learning on, for additional analyses which the original experimenters perhaps did not address.- Would necessitate the actual existence of such a database or repository
- What constraints / obstacles would the researcher confront when searching for others’ data?
- Issues could differ / worsen if researchers were interested in clinical data and/or data from a different region/country/continent.
- Are there additional constraints if using AI/machine learning on human brain data
- If so, what services can repositories provide to address this problem?
Participating resources
This is an open-source, free, and secure reproducible neuroscience analysis platform. The platform enables analyzing of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data. Data can either be uploaded from local computers or imported from public archives such as OpenNeuro.org.
Over 400 data processing apps are available on brainlife.io to build custom data workflows. Thousands of jobs can be submitted using shared clusters or on users' compute resource. Users can perform group-level statistical analysis or apply machine learning methods using Jupyter notebooks. A single record containing the entire data workflow - from raw data to published figures - can be published addressed by with a unique digital object identifier (DOI).
The Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP) Portal is a web interface that facilitates open science for the neuroscience community by simplifying global access to and sharing of datasets and tools. The Portal internalizes the typical cycle of a research project, beginning with data acquisition, followed by data processing with published tools, and ultimately the publication of results with a link to the original dataset.
The CONP Portal was built using technologies and best practices that make sharing easier and reproducible. DataLad and Git-Annex are used to track and index datasets, while Boutiques is used in conjunction with a container engine (e.g. Docker or Singularity) to ensure reproducibility of results. In addition, some pipelines can also be run using High Performance Computing (HPC) via links to the CBRAIN platform.
The DANDI (Distributed Archives for Neurophysiology Data Integration) platform is supported by the BRAIN Initiative for publishing, sharing, and processing neurophysiology data. The archive accepts cellular neurophysiology data including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral time-series, and images from immunostaining experiments. The platform is now available for data upload and distribution. The storage of data in the archive is also supported by the Amazon Opendata program.
The data in the archive can be browsed using the Data Portal.
EBRAINS provides access to a free and open database of neuroscience data, computational models and software tools for researchers, clinicians, scientists and students. Find the resources to take your research to the next level, connect with peers, and enjoy support from their experts.
EBRAINS provides a digital research infrastructure that accelerates collaborative brain research between leading organizations and researchers across the fields of neuroscience, brain health, and brain-related technologies. As a state-of-the-art ecosystem for neuroscience, EBRAINS is on a mission to revolutionize how neuroscience is conducted. The digital ecosystem that they provide enables advances in brain research that translate to innovations in neuroscience, healthcare, and technology.
OpenNeuro is a data archive that follows the FAIR principles for data management. The OpenNeuro web platform allows users to freely store and share Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) datasets.
Users can browse and explore public datasets and analyses from a wide range of global contributors. The collection of public datasets continues to grow as more and more become BIDS compatible. Users can privately share data so colleagues can view and edit their work, and they can publish datasets where anyone can view, download, and run analyses on it. Users can also create snapshots of datasets to ensure past analyses remain reproducible as datasets grow and change.
Evaluation Criteria
1. 50% score on report (usability), 50% on the project value (discovery, results)
2. Point system
a. Pull requests
b. Datasets shared
c. Number of repositories used vs quality of actual work
3. Responsiveness of the repositories
4. Participants’ description, to be used as feedback for repositories
5. Presentation Criteria
a. Protocol
i. Sharer
1. Workflow, provenance, steps
ii. User
1. Can it lead to publication based on that data
Timeline
- Registration: 1 July 2024 - 20 October 2024
- Start: 21 October 2024
- End: 31 January 2025
Jury