Computer data analysis has been revolutionizing almost every field in biology, and neuroscience is no exception. In neuroscience research, we need to analyze a variety of data, including electrophysiological recordings, videos of animal behaviors, high-resolution images of brain slices, spatial-temporal images of blood-oxygen or calcium activities, and so on. Without high-quality software, analyzing such data can become impractical, especially as the size of newer data generation methods outstrip common storage infrastructure. Software development has become an essential part of neuroscience research, and with rapid changes of data acquisition and research goals, software also needs to evolve quickly to meet the demands.
We propose this research topic to promote more synergy between software developers and neuroscience researchers, and more importantly, to help create a friendly space for software developers to publish their own work. Software development is often viewed as technical tasks rather than research, facing the difficulty of publishing novel work as a formal research paper. Embracing software publications in a prestigious journal does not only encourage encourages more software development and sharing, but also enables developers to share their ideas in a scientific way. Through formal publications, a new community may for that brings software development to a new level, more proactive and innovative in solving neuroscience research needs.
The articles well suited to this topic include original research articles, reviews, and perspectives related to open source software applications or libraries for managing, visualizing, processing, or analyzing data generated for neuroscience.
Computer data analysis has been revolutionizing almost every field in biology, and neuroscience is no exception. In neuroscience research, we need to analyze a variety of data, including electrophysiological recordings, videos of animal behaviors, high-resolution images of brain slices, spatial-temporal images of blood-oxygen or calcium activities, and so on. Without high-quality software, analyzing such data can become impractical, especially as the size of newer data generation methods outstrip common storage infrastructure. Software development has become an essential part of neuroscience research, and with rapid changes of data acquisition and research goals, software also needs to evolve quickly to meet the demands.
We propose this research topic to promote more synergy between software developers and neuroscience researchers, and more importantly, to help create a friendly space for software developers to publish their own work. Software development is often viewed as technical tasks rather than research, facing the difficulty of publishing novel work as a formal research paper. Embracing software publications in a prestigious journal does not only encourage encourages more software development and sharing, but also enables developers to share their ideas in a scientific way. Through formal publications, a new community may for that brings software development to a new level, more proactive and innovative in solving neuroscience research needs.
The articles well suited to this topic include original research articles, reviews, and perspectives related to open source software applications or libraries for managing, visualizing, processing, or analyzing data generated for neuroscience.