INCF — International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility
Overview
INCF (International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility) is the international organisation for open and FAIR neuroscience, established in 2005 through the OECD Global Science Forum and hosted by Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Its mission is to coordinate community efforts toward open, FAIR, and citable neuroscience by convening working groups, endorsing community-developed standards, and providing shared infrastructure for neuroinformatics. INCF does not govern community standards directly, and governance of each endorsed standard remains with its own independent body. Its own products include Neurostars, a community Q&A forum for neuroinformatics, the INCF TrainingSpace open neuroscience training catalogue, and the Standards and Best Practices collection, serving a network spanning 18 countries as of 2024.
Standards and Working Groups
INCF convenes working groups across neuroinformatics topics including brain atlases and spatial reference frameworks, electrophysiology data standards, metadata and ontologies, and reproducibility and FAIR data practices. Endorsement follows a multi-stage process: an initial vetting by the Secretariat, expert review against published criteria, an open community review period of at least 60 days, and a final decision by the Standards and Best Practices Committee. Endorsed standards are reviewed for re-endorsement every two years. Thirteen standards had been endorsed as of 2026, spanning neuroimaging, electrophysiology, computational neuroscience, neuromorphology, and data management. Governance of each endorsed standard remains with its own independent body.
Connections
Resources
- https://incf.org
- https://training.incf.org (INCF TrainingSpace)
- https://neurostars.org (Neurostars community forum)
- https://www.incf.org/sbp (Standards and Best Practices portfolio)
- https://www.incf.org/activities/endorse (Endorsement process and criteria)