Evaluation and recruiter platform for cognitive neuroscience studies
Finding the appropriate journal to publish our results is a long and painful progress in neuroscience, especially when multiple studies set up the same goal, and when reviewers ask to repeat some of the experiments. But what if studies would being reviewed from the earliest stage, thus prevent delays, and the unnecessary redundancy? Also, In cognitive neuroscience, recruiting the sufficient number of relevant participants is a key issue. There is also an increasing need for neuroscientist to access big behavioural datasets in order to generate and test models. My goal is to set up a web-application and a connected smartphone-based platform, in which researchers can advertise their online and/or offline studies, and people from all around the world can participate, and track different experiments. The idea comes from a study, in which researchers studied gaming data from an app called Sea Hero Quest, which been downloaded and played by more than 4.3 million people worldwide.
Researchers in the platform would upload (after their study design has been evaluated) their neuropsychological paradigm made with common tools (Psychtoolbox, Eprime, etc.). During the evaluation process, reviewers would have the choice to accept the study design, with or without modifications. Alternatively, reviewers could suggest joining to ongoing studies, thus preventing the unnecessary redundancy and delay during the publication process due to inappropriate study design. Furthermore, in the platform researchers would also be able to advertise their offline (i.e. fMRI/EEG) study, and make their experiment open for recruitment. Participants registered in the platform would be able to select the task they want to perform, or (based on their location) they can apply for ongoing offline experiments. A possible option would be for researchers to offer some kind of remuneration for the volunteers to participate their task, increasing thus the motivation of the volunteers. My vision is to boost cognitive neuroscience by making ongoing studies open for literally everyone, and by getting smartphones and other smart devices connected to everyone’s life involved within the service of neuroscience. A possible extension of the project could be to open the study-design evaluation process for a broader community, strengthening the quality of research in life-sciences.
First part of the project is to set up a website, in which researchers( and possible participants) could register/log in and track thier study(or performance). The planned functions of the website are:
You can choose to be a researcher who advertise his/her online/offline study, or a participant, who can participate in these studies. Different subfunctions will be accessible for the the two group
In order to make sure, that the study design is unique and appropriate, researchers must fill out a page, explicitly describing it. A template is given for each section to make the evaluation process easier. The following sections are requested:
Online: accessible to smartphone-based application to collect data from participants around the world) Offline: Study designs, that requires a fixed setup(EEG/MEG/fMRI, etc), accessible to participant around the area. In this section the researcher is asked to be as explicit as he/she can. If applicable he/she should upload the behavioral task generated with common toolbox (Eprime/Psychotoolbox, etc). // project upgrade: a possible extension of the project is to include a web-api, to generate task-design online
Online Offline Study under evaluation
Provided code of conduct
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Request contribution/full access
Affiliation, experience
Online Offline - near me
This project would help neuroscientists to fine-tune the study design and to make sure it's applicable by evaluating it.The review obtained in this process could possibly be used further in the publication process, reducing thus the reviewing process. If by chance reviewers find out that the study design is very similar to an ongoing study, they could suggest the researcher to join in to ongoing study, helping thus building an area-specific research-network. Making the study appear in the platform, would be beneficial for increasing the number of participants in the study, helping thus neuroscientists to access more data to test their hypotheis and/or build a model.