INCF Endorsement of New Standards & Best Practices

Modern neuroscience is an ever-evolving and burgeoning field, with new discoveries and understanding of brain function continually being made and updated, often correlated with developments in novel experimental technologies and methodologies. Given the brain’s inherent complexity, it follows that researchers’ experimental designs, methodological approaches, annotation strategies, and modeling software suites are often as diverse and varied as the tissue they are trying to describe. Just as pioneering and exploration are fundamental parts of scientific investigation, so too are standardized protocols, without which the validation of neuroscientific findings becomes much more difficult. 

Striving to provide clarity and guidance for neuroscientists when confronted with the myriad technological and methodological options available to them, one of INCF’s principal activities is to review and promote current standards and best practices within the neuroscience field. Over the years, the INCF Standards and Best Practices Committee has developed our Standards and Best Practices (SBP) Portfolio, currently containing 12 endorsements, which are re-evaluated every two years.

Continually at work to provide the neuroscience community with the most up-to-date, effective, and FAIR standards, the SBP Committee has recently endorsed three new standards! Our portfolio now includes the SPARC Data Structure, NetPyNE, and SWC. INCF is confident that these three community standards have already and will continue to serve neuroscientists with clear, effective, and robust solutions to their investigative and analytical needs. 

If you want to learn more about these newly endorsed standards, check out their related blog posts here.