BrainSTEM - An e-age Experimental Neuroscience Lab Notebook

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Project Summary The goal of the parent NIH BRAIN Initiative grant, Oxytocin Modulation of Neural Circuit Function and Behavior, is to advance knowledge of the biological mechanisms by which oxytocin modulates a ‘socio-spatial’ memory circuit and thereby controls specific maternal behaviors through four interconnected projects with a wide range of data types. This application relates to the data core of the parent grant, which seeks to coordinate data collection and standardization across the project teams and efficiently share this data. The BRAIN Initiative has emphasized the importance of sharing research data that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) and facilitated this through funding for repositories, standards, and tools. With the upcoming NIH Data Management and Sharing Requirements, there will be a huge increase in the need for researchers to produce and share data in a way that is FAIR. Currently, most research data is not shared in a way that makes it truly usable and useful. Data shared on public repositories is often difficult to discover and lacks standardized metadata, limiting its degree of reusability. To address these shortcomings, our U19 group has been building BrainSTEM - a centralized, standardized, structured lab notebook for experimental neuroscience. This tool fills critical gaps in the current landscape of repositories and standards that support the FAIR principles for experimental neuroscience data. BrainSTEM’s metadata model is built on a standardized yet flexible language, supporting data discovery and interoperability, but also facilitating modifications to reflect changes in how neuroscience data is collected including changes to experimental techniques, tools, and behavioral paradigms. Most importantly, BrainSTEM addresses the biggest challenge in effecting this fundamental shift in the data sharing landscape – the energy barrier for researchers to change their workflows; because BrainSTEM is centralized with a user-friendly interface, adoption of this tool is accessible to labs regardless of their level of technical expertise, and its granular access controls enable private collaboration within and across labs, with public sharing of projects and datasets only a click away, lowering the data sharing entry barrier substantially. The goals of this supplement project are: 1) to develop a public front-end that allows for precise data discovery through detailed metadata, 2) to develop an API for BrainSTEM that will provide programmatic access and allow for tight integration with data repository APIs, 3) Develop graphical interfaces and common commands for Matlab and python for interacting with the API, 4) leverage the timing of the new NIH requirements, and this project teams strong connections in both the neuroscience and data librarian communities to organize workshops and site visits to increase user adoption of BrainSTEM. This requires financial support for a programmer and support for the key personnel to lead the workshops and site visits.