Recommendations for repositories and scientific gateways from a neuroscience perspective

TL;DR

This paper presents a set of recommendations and criteria for selecting and managing repositories and scientific gateways in neuroscience, emphasizing FAIR principles and sustainability to aid researchers and providers.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive, neuroscience-focused guideline for repositories and gateways, harmonizing existing criteria with new recommendations for accessibility, licensing, and sustainability.

Findings

Recommendations improve repository selection process for neuroscience.

Guidelines promote FAIR principles and sustainability.

Harmonizes existing criteria with new best practices.

Abstract

Digital services such as repositories and science gateways have become key resources for the neuroscience community, but users often have a hard time orienting themselves in the service landscape to find the best fit for their particular needs. INCF (International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility) has developed a set of recommendations and associated criteria for choosing or setting up and running a repository or scientific gateway, intended for the neuroscience community, with a FAIR neuroscience perspective. These recommendations have neurosciences as their primary use case but are often general. Considering the perspectives of researchers and providers of repositories as well as scientific gateways, the recommendations harmonize and complement existing work on criteria for repositories and best practices. The recommendations cover a range of important areas including accessibility, licensing, community responsibility and technical and financial sustainability of a service.