IBRO — International Brain Research Organization

Overview

IBRO is the global association of neuroscience societies, founded in 1961 to promote and support neuroscience research, education, and training worldwide. Its membership spans over 100 international, national, and regional neuroscience organisations coordinated through five regional committees covering Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, North America, and Europe, together representing approximately 95,000 neuroscientists globally as of 2024. IBRO funds its activities primarily through revenue from its two journals, Neuroscience and the open-access IBRO Neuroscience Reports, deploying those funds through training grants, fellowships, travel awards, and capacity-building programmes. It hosts the IBRO World Congress every four years and organises regional schools and workshops across all five regions, with particular focus on supporting researchers in lower-income countries. IBRO is a co-founding partner of the ALBA Network alongside FENS and SfN, and co-funds the African Brain Data Science (ABDS) Academy with the Kavli Foundation in partnership with ABDN.

Open Science and Equity

IBRO’s equity mandate intersects directly with open neuroscience: researchers in many of the regions IBRO serves face systemic barriers to accessing data, tools, and publishing infrastructure. IBRO advocates for open access publishing and FAIR data practices as tools for reducing inequity in global science. Its regional offices coordinate with national research councils and universities to embed open science training in neuroscience capacity-building programmes.

Connections

• relatedTo: ABDN (IBRO co-funds the African Brain Data Science Academy with the Kavli Foundation, in which ABDN is a key organising partner)
• relatedTo: ALBA Network (IBRO is a co-founding partner of ALBA alongside FENS and SfN, promoting equity and inclusion in the global neuroscience community)
• relatedTo: INCF (overlapping mandates for global neuroscience coordination and open science advocacy)

Resources

• https://ibro.org
• https://ibro.org/about
• https://ibro.org/training/ (IBRO training and fellowship programmes)
• https://ibro.org/ibro-schools/ (IBRO regional schools)
• https://ibro.org/journals/neuroscience/ (Neuroscience, IBRO flagship journal)
• https://ibro.org/journals/ibro-neuroscience-reports/ (IBRO Neuroscience Reports, open-access companion journal)
• https://www.kavlifoundation.org/news/expanding-mri-research-in-africa (Kavli Foundation, June 2024, confirms IBRO co-funding of the ABDS Academy)