Abstract
Collaboration in neuroscience is impeded by the difficulty of sharing primary data, results, and software across labs. Here we introduce Neuroscience Data Interface (NDI), a platform-independent standard that allows an analyst to use and create software that functions independently from the format of the raw data or the manner in which the data is organized into files. The interface is rooted in a simple vocabulary that describes common apparatus and storage devices used in neuroscience experiments. Results of analyses – and analyses of analyses – are stored as documents in a scalable, queryable database that stores the relationships and history among the experiment elements and documents. The interface allows the development of an application ecosystem where applications can focus on calculation rather than data format or organization. This tool can be used by individual labs to exchange and analyze data, and it can serve to curate neuroscience data for searchable archives.
Significance Statement
Neuroscience experiments generate heterogeneous data, and each lab typically stores its data and analyses in their own idiosyncratic formats and organizations. We introduce an interface standard - the Neuroscience Data Interface - that allows the user to specify these formats and organizations so that data and analyses can easily be shared among labs or posted to journals and archives.
Footnotes
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
NIH BRAIN Initiative [MH114678]; NIH BRAIN Initiative
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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