Data Sharing and Reuse in Neuroscience

[Sam Staples]

What is your view on the sharing and reuse of data within neuroscience? How has this impacted your work and how do you feel the neuroscience field should navigate this topic? 

[Mathew Abrams]

This is a topic that is very "near and dear" to my heart. As an ardent supporter of open and FAIR neuroscience, data sharing and reuse govern my work. Whether that is through volunteer efforts to develop standards or developing web applications and platforms to make data sharing and reuse more feasible. I believe that data reuse has the potential to democratise neuroscience; that is, enable individuals from under resourced institutions to conduct research beyond their institutional capacity. Moreover, the open data archives developed by the world's large-scale brain initiatives (e.g. BRAIN, Brain/MINDS, CONP, and HBP) are posed to provide the neuroscience research community with large volumes of FAIR data that can not only be reused to advance our understanding of the brain, but also to revolutionise how we teach and learn neuroscience (from high school to graduate school). 

I would love to hear about any of your experiences with data sharing and reuse whether you are pro or against it. My colleagues and I are in the process of collecting data about barriers to data sharing and reuse in neuroscience. I encourage you all to help us out and complete the survey.

[Hugo Sanchez-Castillo]

Tough question my friends... I believe that we will be free of sharing our data, but not for whatever use. We should be aware of the interest conflicts, the bad use of the data, the appropriation of the data or even the burglary of the projects. All persons that wanted to see the data, they should have access, is the way to demonstrate that the data was obtained in the right way, however when we sharing for reuse we should be clear and make the statement that the data is from another experiment or is used to compare models or results from different experiments. Science it should be clear and directed to the understanding of all natural phenomena, we can't ignore the past, the old experiments, the old data because all of this are the founding of the actual science, that means that we are allowed of compare the data, but we are obligated to use it in the right way... Sharing data in neuroscience is good for many reasons, we can compare experiments, we can run different algorithms to find new perspectives, we can learn about the way in which the data were obtained, etc. However not always its will be in that way, sometimes somebody could use it in bad way, but if we are aware of that possibility and we are prepared to claim the rightness of the data, with back ups of the data, laboratory notes, video recordings, the original projects etc, we can be victorius in this hard, but honorable quest.

[Julia Araujo]

Just before I add my comments, let me say how incredible posts I have to inspire me. Mathew and Hugo, congrats once more! You guys have so much to teach and share with us that it always amazes me on the content.

As the opposite face of this planet of 'Data use in Neuroscience' (just kidding) I haven't felt much of an impact on my personal works - at least not as much to allow me to come up with a content and a context to share - but I'm surely continuing this thread with some points on how should Neuro navigate into this topic.

With patience, with caution and with respect: in my perspective, as long as a common ground is followed - no matter the subject - it means the ethics and the Science is being respected for all of those impacted - directly or indirectly - with the publications and with the results of those informations on their each respective fields.

 

 

[Mathew Abrams]

Thank you, Hugo and Julio, for your responses. @Hugo: I agree that dual-use and proper attribution are issues that the community of data sharers should be aware of and take precautions to reduce risks. 

[valeria muoio]

I believe that the more capable minds that think and work on a given topic, the greater the chance of scientific benefit. When I say capable, I include responsibility and ethics. We are in a dangerous age of fake news, data distortion to suit diverse agendas and breaches of privacy, which can cause great harm to people, patients and institutions. As Hugo said, we have to interpret the past, the nature of things and share them, but in a responsible and ethical way.