The neuroimaging community has been a leader in open science and data sharing for many years and neuroimaging researchers are frequent users of both discipline-specific and generalist data repositories as part of their open science workflows. On behalf of the NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), we propose this emergent session to learn from the neuroimaging community about how they use generalist repositories (GRs) for sharing data and other research materials and to gather feedback on how GREI could prioritize its work to enhance GR functionality and resources to better serve the needs of this research community.

In February 2022, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS) launched the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), which brings together seven generalist repositories (Dataverse, Dryad, Figshare, Mendeley Data, Open Science Framework, Vivli, and Zenodo) to work collaboratively to enhance support for data sharing and discovery in GRs. GREI recognizes that GRs play a key role in the data sharing landscape for the FAIR sharing of data in trusted repositories, offering broad flexibility to publish any file type and any research output alongside discipline- and method-specific data repositories when they are available, especially for researchers seeking to comply with global data sharing mandates and to practice open science. Together the GREI repositories are working to enhance common metadata, persistent identifiers, and standard metrics to support cross repository search to lower the barriers for data sharing and reuse.

In this emergent session we propose presenting a short overview of GREI goals and activities to enhance GR support for data sharing and discovery. We will then facilitate an interactive audience poll activity and audience discussion to learn about neuroimaging use cases for GRs including for sharing non-data materials and to uncover gaps in GR functionality and needs for resources or other support.

GREI would like to learn from OSR participants about their data sharing and repository experiences and hear from researchers what GRs could do to better support them through functionality or resources. Conducting community engagement with disciplinary research communities is a key objective for GREI that the program will use to inform our future work and we recognize that while many data repository resources are available in the neuroimaging community, the volume and diversity of research outputs to share necessitates the use of GRs for some outputs. Neuroscience is a top research category for all of the GREI repositories, often in part because these repositories are used to publish materials beyond data including software and code, images and media files, workflows, posters and presentations, and other supplementary files. GRs are also often used in conjunction with disciplinary repositories and data standards. We believe that as users of GRs and keen practitioners of open science with a wide variety of data types and research outputs to share, the neuroimaging community is an especially valuable group for GREI to engage with to inform our work.

Briefly present the objectives and outputs of the NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative

Conduct an interactive audience poll exercise to learn how neuroimaging researchers use GRs alongside discipline-specific data repositories to share data and other research materials

Facilitate an audience discussion to gather feedback about how generalist repositories could enhance their functionality and resources to better serve the needs of the neuroimaging community

ossig2025

OSR 2024 | Emergent Session 4: What can generalist repositories do for you? A community feedback gathering session from the NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative program