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Open Science: Healthy Brain Network Biobank Takes Off!
It’s been several weeks since the Healthy Brain Network Biobank released its first round of publically shared data. (Read the June 21st announcement of the release.) Since then, I’ve been curious about a few basic questions:
· Are people interested in the data?
· What do they think of it?
· How many have made a request for the data?
· What fields do they represent?
· What kinds of questions might be answered by the data set?
This post is the first of several to try to answer those questions.
Are people interested? Seems like it — the paper announcing the Healthy Brain Network Biobank is in the top 3% of articles on Biorxiv (an open access online resource for scientific papers).
As of the July 4th holiday, the abstract has been viewed nearly 4,600 times and almost 800 people have downloaded the full paper. Visit the metrics area of Biorxiv.org to see more statistics about the paper, or read the manuscript to learn more about the Biobank.
When the Biobank first went live, Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, of the UCSF Kavli Institute for Fundamental Neuroscience said this:
The Healthy Brain Network is providing researchers with incredibly valuable data that will enable and advance important science focused on improving our understanding of a variety of mental health and developmental disorders. By making this information available to scientists worldwide, the Child Mind Institute is playing a pivotal role in accelerating discoveries that will improve lives.
Since then, others have added their voices to the mix on Twitter and Facebook from as far away as Serbia, Egypt and Japan! Check out the map below to see the global interest.
Here’s a sampling of what’s been said on Twitter:
Looks like an amazing resource – EEG, MRI & behavioural data from N=644 children & adolescents @ChildMindDotOrg https://t.co/HUazBuM78X
— Robert (@neurofractal) June 14, 2017
Sure, N=664 on ages 5-21, with behavioral and rs and sMRI measures, but there’s EEG data, too! One of these big data sets finally has EEG!! https://t.co/aNZo2LaTI5
— PeterBachman NeRDLab (@NeRDlabPitt) June 14, 2017
Wow! This will be a great resource for discovery and replication! https://t.co/aZg4qV8Z3o
— Jakob Seidlitz (@jakob_seidlitz) June 13, 2017
Got a question about the Healthy Brain Network Biobank? Email questions about the data set to me, and I’ll do my best to incorporate those into future blog posts. Open science for all!
