Dear all,

INCF is seeking community feedback and comments on the review of the MBF neuromorphological file format v 4.0, a format for digital reconstruction & modeling structure for microscopic anatomies, also known as “Neurolucida XML”, which has been submitted to INCF for endorsement as a community standard.

If you have experience of using Neurolucida XML, we ask you to read the review report and comment based on your experiences, especially if you share or reuse data in the format, or work on models or tools that use the format.

Link to the review: https://f1000research.com/documents/10-712


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 make it easy to find the best, most reliable standard appropriate for your research, and ensure recognition for community members investing their time and effort in standards. 

The review criteria (https://incf.org/incf-standards-review-criteria-v20)  include Openness; FAIRness; Design, Testing and Implementation; Governance; Adoption and use; Stability and support; Extensibility; Comparison (similarity to other standards).

--
Malin Sandström, PhD
Community Engagement Officer
malin.sandstrom@incf.org
ORCID: 0000-0002-8464-2494

International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility
Karolinska Institutet
Nobels väg 15 A
SE-171 77  Stockholm
Sweden
http://www.incf.org