Call for community review of SPARC Data Structure - deadline 15-09-2023

INCF is asking for your help to review the Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) data structure to assess its value as a community standard.

Participating is simple; read the INCF SBP committee review report here and leave your feedback in the comments! You can comment to express your support, to point out possibilities for improvement - or both. We are especially interested in hearing from researchers producing, sharing or reusing biomedical data, and from tool developers who would be interested in implementing support for biomedical data standards or use them as part of their workflow.

Financially backed by the NIH Common Fund, SPARC is a large-scale project which aims to deepen our knowledge of nerve-organ interactions. With an initial focus on bioelectronic medicine, the SPARC consortium created the SPARC data structure (SDS), a file and metadata organizational scheme inspired by the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS). This data structure has proven capable of handling complex datasets from multiple and heterogeneous species, measurement techniques, and spatial scales. One of the primary purposes of SDS is to increase the integrity of scientific research by promoting FAIR and open science practices, particularly by facilitating the generation of well-annotated, organized, standardized, and shared biomedical datasets. 

Feedback from the community is an important part of our review process; it helps us ensure that the standard has community support and is useful and practical to the community. By commenting, you contribute to improving the standard for current and future users!

The community review is open until September 15th, 2023, submit your comment here.