By: David Kennedy, PhD (https://doi.org/10.18116/feqt-5s97)

The issue of reproducibility has risen to the fore within the biomedical research community. As a result, a critical new evaluation criteria for many research funders relates to addressing issues of rigor and reproducibility in most funding applications. Central to reproducibility is the dual requirements of 'publishing' complete versions of all components of the research work (data, analysis workflow and results) and making these shared elements FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) so that the continuing investment in research can properly build upon what has come before.

While there are many neuroinformatics resources available to help researchers meet these publication and FAIR needs, NITRC continues expand its capabilities in order to serve the community in many of these aspects.  As most NITRC users already know, NITRC provides support for both local (at NITRC) sharing of software, data or execution environments and aggregation of distributed resource sharing under a common project webpage. Enumerating specific resources, linking these resources to the research publications in which they are used, and exposing this content in a FAIR fashion is becoming the emerging norm for the next-generation of research reporting. NITRC supports this linking through use of standard identifiers such as RRID’s to facilitate identification of use of specific resources in publications, and DOI’s for support of unique identification of software, data and publications. 

Publishing, identifying and linking are an important part of establishing improved reproducibility: all NITRC users are reminded and encouraged to take full advantage of these functions to promote better research reporting.

Quarterly Newsletter Article from March 20, 2018