ReproNim: A Center for Reproducible Neuroimaging Computation

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SUMMARY: Curbing irreproducibility and increasing efficiency and efficacy in research disciplines relying on brain imaging requires not only new technologies and tools, but also a strong component of community engagement and training. During the first phase (2016-2020) the ReproNim training core has developed and disseminated educational material for reproducible neuroimaging through four in-person workshops and a series of training activities timed with the OHBM, SfN, and NeuroInformatics conferences. We have also developed a Massively Online Open course (MOOC) on the Moodle platform to widely disseminate our training material, and have launched the “Train the Trainer” fellowship program in partnership with the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF). Most ReproNim Fellows (18 out of 21) reported they are organizing training events; to date Fellows alone have trained well over 500 trainees . During this first phase, we also learned which activities were the most efficient in disseminating ReproNim training. In the next phase, we propose to extend and complement our previous work in three directions. First, we will develop more comprehensive material, adapted to different trainee backgrounds. We will use specific common key user stories to develop materials that will demonstrate how these can be answered with the combined use of the ReproTools. Second, acknowledging that with limited resources we cannot only rely on training everyone through our own workshops, we will be working on scalable solutions to training by 1) rolling out a more complete version of our MOOC, and 2) extending our Train the Trainer fellowship program to operate a pyramid scheme, such that our Fellows not only develop educational programs in their local environs, but leverage the Train-the-Trainer materials to conduct their own Trainer programs. Third, as materials are being constantly developed in a distributed manner and need to be up-to-date, we will implement better findability and accessibility to updated training material through the development of an inventory of annotated links to training resources. While working on these goals, we will be building a community of trainees and (future) trainers able to participate in the development, dissemination and use of reproducible neuroimaging research practices and tools.