Tools/Templates for Researchers
Lowering the burden of brain and nervous system diseases for patients and society is among the overall aims of NEURON.
It is thus important to cover the entire value chain from understanding disease pathology, improving diagnosis and developing therapy through to advancing prevention, health care and rehabilitation. The NEURON Joint Calls (JTCs) accept applications in the entire range of brain research and neuroscience. In order to further strengthen the clinical and application aspects here, a number of documents, tools and templates can be found and downloaded.
Introductory reading
Project relevant
For the ethical self-assessment of a project or project proposal the EU guidelines can be downloaded.
Data Management Plan (DMP)
NEURON requires funded projects to submit a Data Management Plan (DMP).
- The first DMP is due with the submission of the first scientific report. Since the DMP is a living document it can be modified and the new versions submitted each year with the annual report.
- From JTC2019 onwards the final DMP is to be submitted with the final report, and intended to be published. Researchers may want to publish the DMP themselves however, by default NEURON will publish the final DMP on its website.
- Temporary embargos for publication on the grounds of finalisation of a clinical study or else are acceptable, but only upon justification and not longer than one year.
It is strongly encouraged to use an assistance tool for the DMP development. ERA-NET NEURON currently recommends:
Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW)
Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW), is a tool to create Data Management Plans, through a Knowledge Model with different questions regarding the data management of the research project. Data stewardship focuses on tactical coordination and implementation responsible for establishing data-quality metrics and other requirements regarding good data management. The ultimate goal is to provide high-quality data that is easily accessible in a consistent manner. The output format can be chosen, one is the EU Horizon 2020 format which is also the basis of the NEURON template.
ELIXIR-CONVERGE
ELIXIR-CONVERGE is a project funded by the European Commission to help standardise life science data management across Europe. To achieve this standardisation, the project has developed a data management toolkit for life scientists.
DMPonline
DMPonline is a tool created by the UK’s Digital Curation Centre to assist teams in producing data management plans (DMPs), from proposal preparation through project completion.
FAIRDOM
FAIRDOM is an association that organises the development and distribution of open-source software (the FAIRDOM Platform), provides software services for public use (the FAIRDOMHub), and runs training and community development events, amongst other activities.
Additional information is available here:
Pre-registration of the study design
Pre-registration of the study design is one of the standards defined in the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines. Pre-registration helps improving the study design, mitigate the publications bias and clearly delineates exploratory from confirmatory research. The registered reports publication format offers an approach to the scientific community that emphasizes the importance of the research question and the quality of the methodology prior to data collection. The format requires authors of empirical studies to pre-register their study protocols including hypotheses, details on the sample size and sampling methods, and the analysis plan. The submission of an empirical study outline is followed by a standard peer review process determining the quality of research methodology. If the study is accepted as a registered report, publication is granted to the authors irrespective of the outcomes.
At the Center of Open Science (https://cos.io/rr/) detailed information on the process is provided, and in particular a list of participating journals (currently 80) of which around 10 can be accounted to the neuroscientific area.
A quick introduction and guide can be found in the presentation ‘Reducing bias and improving science with preregistration’ by David Mellor, PhD. Find this presentation at https://osf.io/gsf7w/
The Center for Open Science is a non-profit organization whose mission is to increase the reproducibility and transparency of science. To achieve that mission a number of measures are installed:
- Meta-science and replication studies to evaluate the barriers to reproducibility;
- Policy and training to reduce bias and increase transparency and the Preregistration Challenge (https://cos.io/prereg and https://cos.io/rr ), and
- A common infrastructure to enable open sharing of projects and preprints (https://osf.io and https://osf.io/preprints/).