Nature abhors a paywall: How open science can realize the potential of naturalistic stimuli

Abstract

Naturalistic stimuli show significant potential to inform behavioral, cognitive, and clinical neuroscience. To date, this impact is still limited by the relative inaccessibility of both generated neuroimaging data as well as the supporting naturalistic stimuli. In this perspective, we highlight currently available naturalistic datasets and technical solutions such as DataLad that continue to advance our ability to share this data. We also review scientific and sociological challenges in selecting naturalistic stimuli for reproducible research. Overall, we encourage researchers to share their naturalistic datasets to the full extent possible under local copyright law.

Keywords

• Open science
• Data sharing
• Naturalistic stimuli