Neuroscience Information Framework
 |
|
|---|---|
| Content | |
| Description | Web-based neuroscience resources: data, materials, and tools |
| Data types captured |
Neuroscience |
| Contact | |
| Authors | Martone, M.E. |
| Release date | 2008 |
| Access | |
| Data format | html, xml, json, csv |
| Website | http://www.neuinfo.org/ |
| Web service URL | http://neuinfo.org/developers |
| Sparql endpoint | http://neurolex.org/ query sparql end point |
| Miscellaneous | |
| License |
 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 |
| Versioning | 6.2 |
| Data release frequency |
weekly |
| Curation policy | continuous human and machine |
The Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) is an initiative of the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, which was established in 2004 by the National Institutes of Health.
Development of the NIF started in 2008, when the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine obtained an NIH contract to create and maintain "a dynamic inventory of web-based neurosciences data, resources, and tools that scientists and students can access via any computer connected to the Internet". The project is headed by Maryann Martone, co-director of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), part of the multi-disciplinary Center for Research in Biological Systems (CRBS), headquartered at UC San Diego. Together with co-principal investigators Jeffrey S. Grethe and Amarnath Gupta, Martone leads a national collaboration that includes researchers at Yale University, the California Institute of Technology, George Mason University, Harvard, and Washington University.
Unlike general search engines, NIF provides much deeper access to a focused set of resources that are relevant to neuroscience, search strategies tailored to neuroscience, and access to content that is traditionally “hidden” from web search engines. The NIF is a dynamic inventory of neuroscience databases, annotated and integrated with a unified system of biomedical terminology] (i.e. NeuroLex). NIF supports concept-based queries across multiple scales of biological structure and multiple levels of biological function, making it easier to search for and understand the results. NIF will also provide a registry through which resources providers can disclose availability of resources relevant to neuroscience research. NIF is not intended to be a warehouse or repository itself, but a means for disclosing and locating resources elsewhere available via the web.
The NIFSTD, or NIF Standard Ontology contains many of the terms, synonyms and abbreviations useful for neuroscience, as well as dynamic categories such as defined cell classes based on various properties like neuron by neurotransmitter or by circuit role or drugs of abuse according to the National Institutes on Drug Abuse. Any term (with associated synonyms) or dynamic category (all terms with their synonyms) can be used to simultaneously query all of the data that NIF currently indexes, please find several examples below:
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