Building a FAIR-compliant Digital Repository for Oxytocin Neuroimaging Data

The scientific community, including neuropsychopharmacology, increasingly embraces Open sharing and FAIR principles [1]. However, there is currently no trustworthy repository available for aggregating pharmaco-neuroimaging datasets on an international scale. To address the challenges faced by the scientific community in both research (e.g., variability in study design and the need for large-scale data) and Open Science (e.g., leveraging open data and FAIR-compliant practices), we aim to build an open-sharing neuroimaging digital repository aligned with the OBIDE initiative [2]. The OBIDE repository is expected to aggregate over 1,000 oxytocin neuroimaging datasets, particularly existing resting-state fMRI datasets with corresponding structural MRI and phenotypic information from human participants receiving oxytocin or placebo nasal spray. With its easily accessible metadata and transparent data governance, it will be the first within the pharmaco-neuroimaging community. This repository will enable laboratories worldwide to (i) contribute and share existing data, (ii) easily find and access data, and (iii) select extensive samples tailored to specific investigations (e.g., modulating effects of dosing, participant characteristics), thereby fostering collaboration and utilizing advanced analytic approaches to address a series of research and clinical questions. The OBIDE repository will also serve as a real-world neuroscience use case to validate the capabilities of existing FAIR-compliant services, tools, and solutions in Life Science, such as the FAIR registry WorkflowHub [3] and Data Use Ontology (DUO) [4]. The repository will also leverage solutions already utilized by the research community, including Dataverse software [5] and RO-Crate [6]. These solutions will be adapted to meet the specific needs of the OBIDE consortium, with attention to domain-specific metadata and ontologies (e.g., Brain Imaging Data Structure – BIDS [7]), domain-specific visualization options, and the ability to aggregate data from multiple international providers. In its sustainability plan, the OBIDE repository will evaluate closely related national or international research infrastructures (RIs), such as ELIXIR [8] and EBRAINS [9], to exchange available resources and foster cooperation to facilitate open sharing. We aim to establish a reliable and trusted environment, with the ambition to integrate into the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) ecosystem [10]. The OBIDE repository is currently in the resource-gathering phase to support its technical implementation and is anticipated to become available in the near future, with the aim of accelerating the exploration and identification of neurophysiological correlates associated with oxytocin administration and promoting Open Science in the era of big data.