🧠 fNIRS Open Dataset Contest 2026

Contest Overview

Type: Data sharing challenge

Goal: Encourage the release of high-quality, well-documented fNIRS datasets that others can conveniently reuse.

Scoring: Committee votes: 30% — Panel of ~5 expert members
Community votes: 70% — Open voting for all SfNIRS members and broader community

Timeline

Jan 2026: Submissions open following official announcement

Sep 1, 2026: Submission deadline

Sep–mid Oct 2026: Open community voting period

Oct 16–19, 2026: Winners announced at SfNIRS meeting in Macau

        Recognition and Awards:

1st Prize USD $2,000 or flight + conference fee + hotel in Macau (up to $2,000 total)
2nd Prize USD $1,000 or conference fee + hotel (up to $1,000 total)
3rd Prize USD $500 or conference fee waiver

Rating Criteria

Standard Compliance: Whether the dataset follows best practices and up-to-date standards, including BIDS, NWB, 10-20 system standardized localization, or other established data standards. Datasets not currently supported by these standards are also acceptable, but all files should use standardized formats such as SNIRF, NIfTI, or NeuroJSON/JSON formats.

Quality: Clear documentation with detailed annotations. Encouraged elements include block design diagrams, probe layout, and data quality assessments.

Quantity: Datasets with large numbers of subjects, data channels, trials, measurement duration, and/or modalities. Rich metadata including biological factors (participants.tsv/participants.json) and behavioral measurements.

Reproducibility: All relevant tasks, metadata, scripts, and stimuli should be provided to extend data acquisition and replicate analyses. Sufficient metadata and acquisition details for meaningful secondary analyses.

Dataset Eligibility

Datasets that have not been previously published — including new datasets and datasets associated with prior publications where the data was not publicly released
New datasets are encouraged to submit as a Data Paper for the "fNIRS Commons" special issue of Neurophotonics (no publication fees for Data Paper)
Can include measurements from humans, animals, or synthetic datasets (e.g., simulated fNIRS signals for developing signal processing methods)
Can be submitted from any fNIRS research lab
Must follow ethical and legal requirements, such as de-identification of human data
Submissions can include any type of fNIRS data: task-based, resting-state, or naturalistic recordings
Dataset must be submitted to one or multiple public data hosting websites (OpenNeuro.org, NeuroJSON.io, DANDI Archive, etc.) and provide public URLs in the submission form

BIDS Requirement: All datasets following the BIDS standard must pass the BIDS validator. Submitters are also recommended to use the dataset_description.json creator to ensure format compatibility.