openMINDS — Open Metadata Initiative for Neuroscience Data Structures
Overview
openMINDS is a community-driven, open-source metadata framework for describing neuroscience research products, including datasets, models, software, and workflows, with FAIR-compliant, machine-readable schemas. Development began within the Human Brain Project (HBP) and is now maintained independently under the openMetadataInitiative GitHub organisation, with continued co-funding through the EBRAINS 2.0 Horizon Europe project. EBRAINS adopts openMINDS as the required metadata framework for its Knowledge Graph and Atlas services, but does not govern the framework.
Schema Collections
openMINDS is organised into domain-specific schema collections. The core collection covers fundamental research product metadata including datasets, persons, organisations, licences, protocols, subjects, specimens, and digital identifiers. SANDS (Spatial Anchoring in Neuroscience Data Structures) handles spatial anchoring of data to brain atlases, using UBERON for cross-species region terms and mapping to specific atlas versions such as Allen CCF, BigBrain, and MNI. The computation collection covers computational models, simulations, and workflows. The controlled terms collection is the controlled vocabulary library for openMINDS, covering brain regions, species, techniques, licences, and more.
Connections
- implements: UBERON
- relatedTo: BIDS (openMINDS provides metadata schemas for describing datasets organised according to BIDS conventions)
- relatedTo: NWB (openMINDS provides metadata schemas for describing neurophysiology datasets stored in NWB format)
- producedBy: Human Brain Project
Resources
- https://openminds-specification.readthedocs.io
- https://github.com/openMetadataInitiative/openMINDS
- https://kg.ebrains.eu (EBRAINS Knowledge Graph, powered by openMINDS)