CONP: The Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform

The Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP) is a national platform for open sharing of neuroscience research data and brings together many of the country’s leading scientists in basic and clinical neuroscience to form an interactive network of collaborations in brain research, interdisciplinary partnership, clinical translation and Open Publishing. The goal of the platform is to improve the accessibility and re-usability of neuroscience data and, by increasing awareness of ongoing and past research efforts, it will reduce unnecessary duplication and overlap, resulting in a more efficient use of funding support.

The platform will propel Canadian neuroscience research into a new era of open neuroscience research with the sharing of both data and methods, the creation of large-scale databases, the development of standards for sharing, the facilitation of advanced analytic strategies, the open dissemination to the global community of neuroscience data and methodology, and the establishment of training programs for the next generation of neuroscience researchers. To encourage successful drug development, CONP will share early-stage findings among academic and pharmaceutical partners through the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Ultimately, the CONP will help researchers collect, link and analyze data from across the country more easily, leading to better and faster outcomes for patients.