BRAINSTEM – A COLLABORATIVE ELECTRONIC LAB NOTEBOOK AND METADATA FRAMEWORK FOR EXPERIMENTAL NEUROSCIENCE (WWW.BRAINSTEM.ORG)

A growing part of the neuroscience community is seeking better ways to organize experimental data, support open science, and enable meaningful data reuse. However, experimental metadata are often fragmented across lab notebooks, spreadsheets, code, and data files, making experiments difficult to revisit, share, or interpret outside the originating lab. Although advances have been made in data standards, repositories, and analysis tools, experimental neuroscience still lacks a practical, user-friendly system for capturing and organizing rich metadata that describes both data and experimental context.
BrainSTEM (www.BrainSTEM.org) addresses this need by combining a collaborative electronic lab notebook with a standardized yet flexible framework for describing experimental neuroscience. BrainSTEM is a centralized, web-based platform that reflects how experiments are actually performed, enabling researchers to document subjects, procedures, sessions, manipulations, and data within a structured relational model. The system supports a wide range of experimental modalities, including electrophysiology, imaging, and behavior, while remaining adaptable to emerging methods.
Experimental metadata can be entered through user-friendly web forms, accelerated with templates, organized in a searchable interface, and supported by an import tool for easy adoption. Granular permission settings allow labs to maintain full control over their data, enabling private organization, selective collaboration, or open sharing. A REST API offers machine-readable access, allowing integration with analysis pipelines and tools.
Beyond serving as an electronic notebook, BrainSTEM represents an effort to establish a common language for experimental neuroscience. By combining controlled vocabularies, standardized taxonomies, and extensible schemas, BrainSTEM balances standardization with flexibility, allowing it to grow with the community.