Neuroendocrinology Open Data Exchange Standard (NODES) aims at developing a community-driven standard data structure for psychoneuroendocrinology (PNE) to facilitate data sharing and the reuse of open datasets in our field. Furthermore, we want to provide infrastructure that helps restructuring and validating datasets and meta-data prior to publication.
Our mission 🏁
Sharing research data openly conveys great potential, as it facilitates reproducibility and substainability. In the field of PNE, which investigates the links between hormones, behavior, and wellbeing, sharing data is currently not common. Several factors might contribute to this: Preparing hormonal data for publication is time-consuming and challenging, as the correct interpretation relies on contextual factors and technical details of data acquisition. Also, no standard format has been established, which complicates data sharing and reuse. NODES intends to clearly define which information is necessary to correctly interpret PNE data while addressing practical considerations like accessibility and compatibility.
Who we are 👥
Our Task Force 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. We all have extensive experience in working with hormonal data and faced major challenges when trying to access and merge datasets from different projects.
The task force was initiated by Maria Meier, Christiaan Vinkers, Jens Pruessner and Milou Sep, who authored an editorial on the topic and moderated a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2024 (https://osf.io/ukh3g/).
Our next milestone 🚩
A Delphi study is currently running to reach an expert consensus regarding important open questions. The Delphi Steering Group developed the survey and started data collection on May 15 2025. You can participate via this link. Data collection of the first round will end on June 15 2025.