Why share data? Lessons learned from the fMRIDC

Abstract

Neuroimaging and the discipline of cognitive neuroscience have grown together in lock-step with each pushing the other toward an improved ability to explore and examine brain function and form. However successful neuroimaging and the examination of cognitive processes may seem today, the culture of data sharing in these fields remains underdeveloped. In this article, we discuss our own experience in the development of the fMRI Data Center (fMRIDC) – a large-scale effort to gather, curate, and openly share the complete data sets from published research articles of brain activation studies using fMRI. We outline the fMRIDC effort’s beginnings, how it operated, note some of the sociological reactions we received, and provide several examples of prominent new studies performed using data drawn from the archive. Finally, we provide comment on what considerations are needed for successful neuroimaging databasing and data sharing as existing and emerging efforts take next steps in archiving and disseminating the field's valuable and irreplaceable data.

What Drives Academic Data Sharing?

“…would prevent him or her from sharing data. Besides the actual sharing effort [21,23,29,33,[36][37][38][39][40][41], scholars utter concerns regarding the effort required to help others to make sense of the data [42]. The knowledge factor becomes apparent in Sieber's study [43] in which most researchers stated that data sharing is advantageous for science, but that they had not thought about it until they were asked for their opinion.…”

“…The knowledge factor becomes apparent in Sieber's study [43] in which most researchers stated that data sharing is advantageous for science, but that they had not thought about it until they were asked for their opinion. Missing knowledge further relates to poor curation and storing skills [33,44] and missing knowledge regarding adequate repositories [21,42]. In general, missing knowledge regarding the existence of databases and know-how to use them is described as a hindering factor for data sharing.…”

Editorial: MAPPING: MAnagement and Processing of Images for Population ImagiNG

“…To conclude, this RT demonstrates that, since the pioneer experiments of neuroimaging data sharing with the fMRIDC project (Van Horn and Gazzaniga, 2013) or the BIRN initiative (Keator et al, 2008), many technical efforts have been performed or are currently underway to facilitate data and tools sharing. Solutions now exist that are mature enough to help us make substantial changes to how we conduct health research (Chan et al, 2014), improving reproducibility, and quality of published research findings.…”

Progress toward openness, transparency, and reproducibility in cognitive neuroscience

“…An early pioneer in data sharing was the fMRI Data Center (fMRIDC) at Dartmouth College, founded in 1999 6,[56][57] . Around the same time, several journals, most notably the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JOCN), tried to implement mandatory open data sharingincluding deposition of raw data files (e.g., BOLD time series, anatomical images)-as a requirement for publication.…”