Published: 24-05-2022 11:55 | Updated: 24-05-2022 14:52

Recommendations for repositories and scientific gateways from a neuroscience perspective

incf

The Infrastructure Committee of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) has developed a set of selection criteria for data repositories and science gateways, to support neuroscience researchers in choosing the best service for their particular use case.

Digital services such as repositories and science gateways have become key resources for the neuroscience community, but users often have a hard time orienting themselves in the service landscape to find the best fit for their particular needs.

INCF's Infrastructure Committee has created an inclusive set of criteria that can apply to a wide and diverse range of digital services, including repositories, science gateways, data, and software. These criteria are part of INCF’s mission to support the transmission to FAIR neuroscience, and  are intended to be a ‘living’ set, regularly updated to reflect developments in neuroscience research infrastructure needs.

The recommendations published as a Comment in Scientific Data, are intended to document the reasoning and considerations that went into the criteria development process, so that the same guiding principles can be used for further development.

Recommendations

  • Ensure discoverability and transparency in ownership and service usage statistics
  • Clearly communicate access and reuse conditions
  • Consider ethical requirements for authorship transparency and sensitive data
  • Follow best practices for licensing and responsibility
  • Ensure accessibility and interoperability
  • Build capabilities for reproducibility, replicability, reuse
  • Excel in documentation and user support
  • Be transparent in governance and operations
  • Involve community in governance and decision making
  • Be transparent on sustainability - financial and technical

Publication

Recommendations for repositories and scientific gateways from a neuroscience perspective
Sandström M, Abrams M, Bjaalie JG, Hicks M, Kennedy DN, Kumar A, Poline J_B, Roy PK, Tiesinga P, Wachtler T, Goscinski WJ
Scientific Data 9, 212 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01334-1

Helena Ledmyr, PhD

Director - Development and Communications

International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Secretariat  Karolinska Institutet. Nobels väg 15A, SE-171 77 Stockholm. Sweden