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. 2021 Oct 18:10:e71774.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.71774.

The OpenNeuro resource for sharing of neuroscience data

Affiliations

The OpenNeuro resource for sharing of neuroscience data

Christopher J Markiewicz et al. Elife. .

Abstract

The sharing of research data is essential to ensure reproducibility and maximize the impact of public investments in scientific research. Here, we describe OpenNeuro, a BRAIN Initiative data archive that provides the ability to openly share data from a broad range of brain imaging data types following the FAIR principles for data sharing. We highlight the importance of the Brain Imaging Data Structure standard for enabling effective curation, sharing, and reuse of data. The archive presently shares more than 600 datasets including data from more than 20,000 participants, comprising multiple species and measurement modalities and a broad range of phenotypes. The impact of the shared data is evident in a growing number of published reuses, currently totalling more than 150 publications. We conclude by describing plans for future development and integration with other ongoing open science efforts.

Keywords: EEG; MEG; MRI; data sharing; human; mouse; neuroimaging; neuroscience; open science; rat.

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Conflict of interest statement

CM, KG, FF, RB, YH, JW, OE, MG, AJ, RP No competing interests declared, EM is owner of Squishymedia which is funded to perform software development work on OpenNeuro. NH is an employee of Squishymedia which is funded to perform software development work on OpenNeuro.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. A schematic overview of the data upload process.
Figure 1—figure supplement 1.
Figure 1—figure supplement 1.. Word clouds based on Cognitive Atlas terms for psychological concepts (top) and tasks (bottom) identified from titles and README files associated with OpenNeuro datasets.
Figure 1—figure supplement 2.
Figure 1—figure supplement 2.. Word clouds based on Cognitive Atlas terms for psychological concepts (top) and tasks (bottom) identified from titles and README files associated with OpenNeuro datasets.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. The volume of data available on OpenNeuro has shown a steady growth since its opening started operations in 2017.
Shown are figures from July 2018, when all data were migrated to a new DataLad storage backend, through the present date. The green line illustrates the cumulative growth in total number of datasets, and the red line shows the aggregate of subjects (in thousands).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. OpenNeuro datasets vary substantially in number of participants (X axis), number of sessions per participant (Y axis), and number of tasks per participant (size/color of datapoints); axes are log-scaled for easier visualization.
Results are based on metadata derived directly from the 502 OpenNeuro datasets available via DataLad as of 10/9/2021.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. Published reuses of OpenNeuro datasets, split by the type of reuse.
Note that the final bar includes only reuses identified through June 2021.

Comment in

  • A FAIR platform for data-sharing.
    Wiseman S. Wiseman S. Nat Neurosci. 2021 Dec;24(12):1640. doi: 10.1038/s41593-021-00976-5. Nat Neurosci. 2021. PMID: 34848877 No abstract available.

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