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Align with the NMIND consortium for better neuroimaging

Nature Human Behaviour volume 7, pages 1027–1028 (2023)Cite this article

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Robust and validated tools are essential for reproducible science. Yet, in brain imaging, well-implemented and validated tools are not always available and accessible. Many investigators find it necessary to build their own software, but such software rarely follows best practices of software engineering and concerns about the resources that are required to support it are often a limiting factor in sharing. Here we propose the NMIND consortium as a means to bolster reproducible research through evaluation against open, community-developed, scientific software-development standards. NMIND is a grassroots community that is working towards simplifying standardization and collaboration for scientific software. We invite the field of neuroimaging to unite behind high-quality and transparently benchmarked standards and tools.

We believe that NMIND is necessary and timely for the neuroscience community. The scale and complexity of neuroimaging has increased over the past decade1, but lagging software infrastructure contributes to a crisis in reproducibility2. With the onset of mandates such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) data sharing and management policy in the USA, there is a clear and present need for well-engineered tools and resources to go alongside well-described data and metadata. This will ensure the FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability)3 dissemination of research.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Michael P. Milham, Damien Fair.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Data Analytics, Innovation, and Rigor, Child Mind Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Gregory Kiar, Jon Clucas & Michael P. Milham

  2. Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Eric Feczko, Robert Hermosillo & Damien Fair

  3. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Mathias Goncalves, Christopher J. Markiewicz & Russell A. Poldrack

  4. McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Dorota Jarecka & Satrajit Ghosh

  5. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    Yaroslav O. Halchenko

  6. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Xinhui Li

  7. Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Oscar Miranda-Dominguez

  8. Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Theodore D. Satterthwaite

Authors
  1. Gregory Kiar
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  2. Jon Clucas
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  7. Yaroslav O. Halchenko
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  8. Robert Hermosillo
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  12. Russell A. Poldrack
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  13. Theodore D. Satterthwaite
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  14. Michael P. Milham
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  15. Damien Fair
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gregory Kiar.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Kiar, G., Clucas, J., Feczko, E. et al. Align with the NMIND consortium for better neuroimaging. Nat Hum Behav 7, 1027–1028 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01647-0

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