Info for Authors

Author Submission Instructions

This page contains instructions on how to submit your imaging data to the Data Center. In order for the Data Center to properly store and the index the data you provide, you are required to submit certain technical information that well defines your experiment.

Webforms have been specially prepared and designed so that you, the author(s), can provide the Data Center this information. Great care has gone into the design of the webforms, e.g. ease of use, logical structure, the information requested, etc. However, the Data Center recognizes that some difficulties may arise in this initial round of submissions. These difficulties may be due to any number of reasons, ranging from exactly understanding what is being asked on a particular form to simply not having the information we are requesting. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask us (submissions@fmridc.org). The Data Center wishes to make this process as painless as possible.

The webforms will evolve over time. Based on your feedback, they will evolve into something that the entire neuroimaging community will find easy and straightforward to use and complete.

As the forms are filled out and updated, you will automatically be notified (in "real time") if the given page has been completed. Also, you can always go back and edit any forms that you have previously entered. A single page does not have to completed at the first attempt - fields may be left blank and filled in later. Visual cues (i.e. buttons colored green or red) are provided, where "red" indicating a particular form still needs to be completed.

Instructions

1. Select the "login" link found on the submissions page.
    
   You will be prompted for a username and password. Use those issued to you by the Data Center. If you do not have a username and password and wish to submit data from a peer-reviewed journal article, please contact us at submissions@fmridc.org.
    
   
2. Enter the requested experiment information, e.g. number of subjects, number of experimental groups. There is also a field that will be used to upload the Methods Section of your paper. You can upload any standard word processing/document format.
    
   
3. You will now be able to enter all the information concerning this experiment. You will probably first want to enter the information for your subjects.
    
   
4. Enter information for each subject, e.g. Subject ID number, age, experimental group. Also included on this form are other entry fields that you may use to describe any particular aspects of your subjects that are important for your study. The first of these is a health status field where you can denote the status of your subject at the time of his/her scan. There are then two table for assessment measures and medications. In these fields please list any assessments performed as part of the study (e.g. a handedness survey) and any medications that were an integral part of your study.
    
   
5. After entering the subject information, you will need to enter the information concerning the scanner protocols used. Enter a scanner protocol for each *different* protocol used. For example, if you used the same functional EPI protocol multiple times during your study, you need to only enter it once here. Please fill out the information requested on this form for your anatomical and functionals scan protocols.
    
   
6. Next, you will want to enter the experimental protocols for the tasks used in the experiment. Please fill out the information concerning the events and epochs for each different task. Remember, if you used the same task multiple times you need only enter the information once here.
    
   
7. Now you are ready for the last step. You can now enter scanner session information for each subject. It is here that the connections between subjects, scanner protocols and experimental protocols will be made, using the IDs provided in steps 4, 5 and 6. For example, a particular scanning session may involve Subject "my_subject". There were five runs during this session. In the first run, scanner protocol "localizer" and no experimental protocol was used. In the second run, scanner protocol "coplanar_anat" was used. In the 3rd and 4th run scanner protocol "functional_epi" was used with experimental protocol "my_task". Finally, the 5th run used only scanner protocol "highres_anat".
    
   

When all the forms have been completed, you will be required to press the "Finalize" button. This will lock in the information you have entered. No further changes will be permitted. Therefore, make sure you are completely satisfied that all the information provided is accurate.

After all the data has been received (either via ftp, tape or cd-rom, or some combination of the three) and the webforms have been completed and "locked", you will be asked to complete the final set of forms, whereby you will associate the data files with the particulars of your study. This step can be thought of as drawing a graph connecting items in two columns, where (roughly) one column represents data files and the other column represents a subject's scans.