We are pleased to inform you that on January 25 2022, the INCF Standards and Best Practices (SBP) committee endorsed the MBF file format as a standard, with the standard number INCFSN-22-01.

All INCF standards undergo re-review every two years. MBF Bioscience and INCF will work together to further improve the FAIRness of the standard until the next review, including implementation of the governance policy and modification of the standard’s license from the CC-BY-ND-NC to a CC-BY-ND.

The committee is pleased to see an open format from a commercial entity go through the endorsement process, and applaud MBF Bioscience for taking this very important step in support of open and FAIR neuroscience.

See the community review
Read the endorsement statement

Why endorse community standards?

INCF (incf.org) has implemented a formal procedure for evaluating and endorsing community standards and best practices in support of the FAIR principles. Our mission is to make neuroscience more open and FAIR, to ensure that research funds and efforts are well invested, and that neuroscientific findings are robust and replicable. Open community review is a very important step in the process.
 
Quality community standards are necessary to make FAIR resources and processes work, but too many neuroscience communities lack robust standards or have competing incompatible standards. The rapid development of new techniques also means that there is a continuous need for new and updated standards, and that old standards need an active developer and user community keeping them up to date.

By endorsing standards, INCF wants to:
Similar to other standards, the review criteria include: