Brainhack Paper Guideline

Here you are provided a quick guideline to help you addressing the scientific question and the research is done in your paper in a well and simply formatted way.

Not all of the items listed here are the absolute requisities to pass the review processes but they are important points to take into consideration for including in your paper for the clarity and sanity of the research conveyed and to make it easy to be understood by the public.

So please use this guideline as a matter of checklist regarding your preprint.

Project Information

Title (required)

Provide the working title of your project. It may be the same title that you submit for publication of your final manuscript, but it is not a requirement.

Extra info: The title should be a specific and informative description of a project. Vague titles such as “Brainhack preprint plan” are not appropriate.

Authors (required)

List all the project attendees that are associated with any part of the project run from the first day of the Brainhack until the latest day of the registration.

Abstract (required)

  • Please give a brief description of your study, including some background, the purpose of the study, or broad research questions.
  • If the project is based on a study, please clearly declare the hypothesis.
  • Give the open-access link (Git-based repository, OSF preprint) of the repository where the tool developed and the material produced associated with the project.

Extra info: The description should be no longer than the length of a short paragraph. It can give some context for the proposed project, but great detail is not needed here for your preprint.

Keywords (required)

Indicate the keywords related to the project

Introduction (required)

  • Give a brief literature review based on the work that has been done in the field.
  • List specific and concise aims and necessities of the project; in other words, the fulfilled milestones pre-specified in your project pitch aiming for a diverseaiming diverse and non-specialist audience.
  • Give an overview of the work that has been done throughout the project.
  • Indicate how the project would benefit the neuroscience society (i.e. implications of the project).
  • Give a link to the open platform(s) where the project materials is (are) listed and stored along with the explanation of how they can be accessed.

Methods

  • Software Tool Development Based Projects.
  • Explain how/which way already existing tools/hardware are employed in the development of the project.
  • List the details of the specific functionalities of the developed tool.
  • Explain how this tool can facilitate user experiences.
  • Please indicate all the necessary cross-references (e.g. using the format of [dataset] Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g. DOI) or the publisher’s format) to reference the data used in your project. If you had to create or acquire a new dataset for your project, please make it publicly and openly available, and provide a means so that it can be cross-referenced.
  • Explain the reason for the choice of the data, what the data includes, from which repository (provide URL, identifier or accession code to help others to access the data for reproducibility purposes) and indicate the related taken permissions and ethics applies to the data. If the data is a restricted use only and you have specific permissions to use, please indicate the legal and ethical reason for the restriction, and provide a link to the organization/group/publication the data is taken from.
  • In some cases the publisher of the data might not be willing to accept the citation to the data, in such cases cite the publication/paper that uses and explains the data, its collection etc.
  • In case you use existing data to test the tool, please describe and explain the steps you have taken to assure that you are unaware of any patterns or summary statistics in the data. This may include an explanation of how access to the data has been limited, who has observed the data, or how you have avoided observing any analysis of the specific data you will use in your study.
  • Indicate every processing applied to the data (e.g. preprocessing, dimensionality reduction, thresholding, etc.).
  • If you will collect a new data set to test and/or validate the tool, please adhere to section 5.3.

Guideline/Workflow Development Based Projects

  • Indicate the purpose of the to-be-achieved guideline/workflow.
  • Specify the target community and describe to which pipeline or the tool will contribute and how it will facilitate the use of that pipeline.
  • Address how this tool will be helpful to the target community.
  • Describe the plan for dissemination of the use of the tool by the widespread communities.

Study Based Projects

  • Please indicate your hypothesis regarding the study.
  • If the study involves human/non-human subjects indicate the related ethics application details.
  • If the study involves human subjects explain how the subjects were informed about the study details and their consent are taken.
  • If the study involves human subjects indicate how the subject data will be secured and stored.
  • Explain the study design including the groups and measures (repeated, factorial, two-group, randomized). Is it a between (unpaired, paired), within-subject (paired), or mixed design? Describe any counterbalancing required. Typical study designs for observation studies include cohort, cross-sectional, and case-control studies.
  • Example: We have a within-subject design, with one-factor accuracy (two levels: accurately cued / inaccurately cued trials).

More info: This question has a variety of possible answers. The key is for a researcher to be as detailed as is necessary given the specifics of their design. Be careful to determine if every parameter has been specified in the description of the study design. There may be some overlap between this question and the following questions. That is OK, as long as sufficient detail is given in one of the areas to provide all of the requested information. For example, if the study design describes a complete factorial, 2x3 design and the treatments and levels are specified previously, you do not have to repeat that information.

  • Please describe the process by which you will collect your data. If you are using human subjects, this should include the population from which you obtain subjects, recruitment efforts, payment for participation, how subjects will be selected for eligibility from the initial pool (e.g. inclusion and exclusion rules), and data collection timeline.
  • Justify and identify the sample size of your study. How many units will be analyzed in the study?
  • Describe each variable that you will measure.
  • Please list all the basic steps of your preprocessing.
  • Please briefly explain how the preprocessing of the data will be held? (methods, tools, pipeline etc.)
  • Please briefly explain how you will analyze the data.
  • What statistical model will you use to test each hypothesis?
  • How will you determine what data or samples, if any, to exclude from your analyses? How will outliers be handled? Will you use any awareness check? Is there a minimum number of trials participants should contribute to the analysis?
  • How will you deal with incomplete or missing data?

Progress (required)

  • The process completed before Brainhack Explain the work has been completed before the hacking.
  • The process completed throughout Brainhack Explain the work has been completed during the hacking period.
  • The process completed after Brainhack Explain the work has been completed during the hacking period.

Results (required)

  • Explain the main results of the project/collaborative work.
  • Include figures that would help with the explanation of the tool developed.

Implications and Future Directions

  • List the implications the project comes with the current version with the main reasons behind them.
  • List the ideas regarding the solutions towards overcoming the implications.
  • List the future directions and plans regarding the tool developed and how these future plans are aimed to be achieved.

Conclusion

  • Summarise the aim of the project and the achieved success/work done by the submission of the registration form.
  • Highlight the main facilitation the tool brings to the neuroscience and open science community.

Acknowledgment

  • Indicate the additional information regarding the contributions outside the project attendees. If any of the instructors provided the necessary guidance for the project to be successful and is not listed in the authors, acknowledge them.

Ethics and Security

###Collected Data

  • Indicate the ethics application/process regarding the data collection processes.
  • Indicate how the data collected will be stored in a safe and secure way.
  • Indicate under which agreement data sharing is agreed and approved across the parties attended to the development of the project.

Existing Data

  • Briefly describe where the data is obtained.
  • Briefly describe how the data has been collected.
  • Briefly describe how the data has been anonymized.

Author Contributions

  • List the author’s initials and their contributions to the project. This section is for the identification of the specific role(s) of the authors throughout the project.

Conflict of Interest

  • Declare whether there is any conflict of interest with the authors and the project. Acknowledgement
  • Indicate/list the funding, grants, data or resources that were provided by a third party company/funding agency/research body that facilitated and supported the proposed study.

References

  • List the references used in the preprint.

Appendix/Notes

  • Any additional documentation, supporting materials that has to be listed with the publications or needs to be addressed for further details that is stored in the repository should be listed with their direct links in this appendix section.