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Guest post by two of our International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) channel advisors, Helena Ledmyr and Malin Sandström.

Global sharing of neuroscience data and software is one of INCF’s key values. Indeed one of the criteria for our new seed funding scheme (submit your application before Nov 30!) is that source code, data, reports, training or other materials resulting from funded projects should be made publicly available. In alignment with our mission to support open science, we have a long-term collaboration with open science publisher F1000Research, where we have a gateway to two channels: our main neuroinformatics channel and a channel specifically with outcomes from our workshops and the Neuroinformatics Congress. On the latter, our abstract presenters are encouraged to upload their posters and slides and any papers resulting from work presented at the events.

In 2008, INCF brought the global neuroinformatics community together at the first Neuroinformatics Congress in Stockholm, Sweden – since then we have rotated the Congress each year between our member countries. In 2016 we were excited to bring the congress to the UK, one of our most active nodes, for the first time. F1000Research put out a call for papers to be included in the Neuroinformatics 2016 article series – a total of 20 papers have been published so far.

The theme for much of this year’s meeting was set in the first keynote, by our long-time community contributor, Jean-Baptiste Poline who spoke on reproducibility in neuroimaging. The title of his talk was “Moving grounds: The evolution of neuroinformatics, statistical, and sociological aspects and their interactions in brain imaging research.” The points from his presentation were echoed and elaborated in several presentations and discussions. Keynotes and sessions were sorted by tracks such as neuroimaging, computation and cognition, visualization, and brain disorders, and were all followed by a short round table discussion to wrap up comments from speakers and attendees. You can see the full program here: https://neuroinformatics2016.org/program.html.

Other reproducibility aspects raised were “how to not destroy reproducibility with a science gateway” (Tristan Glatard), how to get funders more interested in reproducibility (first discussion panel), how reproducing results is boring but needs to be part of the workflow (second discussion panel), how BigNeuron works with “reproducibility, reusability and beyond” (Hanchuan Peng) and more. Our event Storify has many of the highlights.

On the same topic, INCF also supports the Resource Identification Initiative, a project which aims to improve scientific reproducibility by promoting research resource identification, discovery, and reuse. It helps generation and use of Research Resource IDentifiers (RRIDs), persistent and unique identifiers for referencing a research resource such as an antibody or model organism in articles and elsewhere. RRIDs are in use across a wide variety of journals, but are perhaps most useful combined with open access, because =making research openly accessible is more effective if it is also 100% clear what resources you have used. You can find authenticated tools, organisms and cell lines on the RRID portal, check it out!

As usual, we are organizing the Neuroinformatics Congress in a different country next year: Malaysia! Our newest member country will host the Congress in Kuala Lumpur on August 20-21, 2017, and we are looking forward to meeting many new community members as well as our much appreciated “regulars”. News about next year’s Congress will be posted at https://neuroinformatics2017.org/, and you can also stay updated with INCF and our activities through social media or our newsletter: https://www.incf.org/news/connect-with-us.

The next possibility to connect with us is at SfN in San Diego, where we will have a booth in the non-profits aisle for the 10th year running! Come and find us at booth 4112, and join our social, co-hosted with NIF, SciCrunch, and GigaScience, where Maryann Martone and Cameron Craddock will talk more about reproducibility! More info: https://www.incf.org/node/160