Sharing data openly conveys great potential for science, as it facilitates reproducibility and substainability. In the field of psychoneuroendocrinology (PNE), which investigates the links between hormones, behavior and wellbeing, sharing data openly is currently not common. This may be because preparing hormonal data for publication can be time-consuming and challenging, as the correct interpretation relies on contextual factors and technical details of the data acquisition. At the moment, no standard format in PNE has been established, which complicates data sharing and reuse. The Task Force Neuroendocrinology Open Data Exchange Standard (NODES) aims to develop a community-driven standard data structure for PNE as well as supportive infrastructure, such as web applications that help restructuring and validating datasets and meta-data prior to publication. NODES intends to clearly define which information is necessary to correctly interpret PNE data while at the same time addressing related practical considerations like accessibility and compatibility. In a first step, a Delphi study will be conducted to reach an expert consesus regarding important open questions concerning the development of a standard data structure.
The task force was initiated by Maria Meier, Christiaan Vinkers, Jens Pruessner and Milou Sep, who authored an editorial on the topic and moderated an associated discussion at the annual meeting of the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2024 (https://osf.io/ukh3g/).
NODES currently entails an interdisciplinary group of 15 members from more than 10 institutions with a wide range of expertise, including human and animal researchers, clinical practitioners, as well as bioinformaticians and programmers. They have extensive experience in working with hormonal data and faced major challenges when trying to access and/or merge datasets from different projects, e.g. in the course of meta-analyses or the Stress-EU project.
The project has been awarded a YERUN Open Science Award and was featured in this news post from the University of Konstanz.