INCF’s 12th year as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) mentoring organization will be the biggest yet; 40 of our projects were accepted!

Terminology is often a barrier to enter a new field. The open scholarship movement in particular has generated many new terms and acronyms. Now there is a community-sourced glossary for open scholarship terms, developed with the aim to facilitate education and improve communication between experts and newcomers. The first version, v1.0, lists 250 terms and was recently described in a Comment in Nature Human Behaviour. 

The goal of the MatNWB Working Group is to support the re-use of neurophysiology data via NWB by collecting MATLAB user requirements, outreaching to the wider MATLAB user community, coordinating among development teams (MatNWB, core NWB, MathWorks), identifying community project and collaboration opportunities, and other activities as may be determined.

This week, INCF is applying to participate in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for the 12th time running. GSoC is a long-running program where contributors new to open source work with mentors on coding projects supported by a stipend from Google.

INCF has been an active member of the IBI for several years, and Maryann Martone, chair of the INCF Governing Board, is also the co-chair of the IBI Data Standards and Sharing Working Group. In December 2021 the working group’s task force on International Data Governance published a paper describing issues and possible solutions for brain data governance.

During 2021, the INCF Infrastructure Committee has focused on developing a set of recommendations and associated criteria for choosing or setting up and running a repository or scientific gateway. A manuscript giving the rationale for the recommendations has been submitted, and is now available as a preprint on arXiv.

The INCF Working Group on Neuroinformatics in Aging was formed in reaction to the observation that countries in Asia Pacific face a major societal burden due to decline in mental abilities and health of the rapidly aging population.

INCF calls for mentors and project ideas for GSoC 2022. INCF has participated in the program since 2011 as a mentoring organization--identifying and recruiting mentors from our community who volunteer to mentor one or more candidates in open source software development over the summer.

The new ARTEM-IS Working Group aims to develop tools for the ARTEM-IS standard for electrophysiological methods reporting. ARTEM-IS is short for an Agreed Reporting Template for EEG Methodology - International Standard and is designed to make reporting EEG methodology easier and more accurate, by providing specific fields for specific details.

INCF has successfully concluded its 11th season of the Google Summer of Code, with 21 students completing their projects over the summer, mentored by more than 40 mentors from the INCF community.