Data standard
BIDS
Brain Imaging Data Structure
A community standard for organising and describing neuroimaging and related data: MRI, EEG, MEG, iEEG, PET, microscopy, NIRS, motion, MRS, EMG, eye tracking, and derivatives such as atlases. Its rules are a machine-readable YAML schema, also exported as one JSON file, that renders the specification and drives the BIDS Validator. Metadata fields point to HED, Cognitive Atlas, CogPO, the Cell Ontology, NCBI Taxonomy and RRIDs.
Source & access
- homepage bids.neuroimaging.io HTTP 200
- repository github.com HTTP 200
- download bids-specification.readthedocs.io HTTP 200
Schemas & modules 5
- BIDS schema (YAML source)Objects (entities, metadata, columns, suffixes, extensions) and rules, including expression-based checks
- BIDS Extension ProposalsIndex of BEPs, for example BEP028 provenance, BEP032 microelectrode electrophysiology and BEP044 stimuli
- BIDS-Prov (BEP028)Provenance of BIDS derivatives as W3C PROV in JSON-LD
- BIDS Stats ModelsPydantic-defined specification of statistical models over BIDS datasets
- BIDS 2.0Backwards-incompatible changes proposed for the next major version
Automated evaluation
F Findable FAIR3/12
- Persistent identifier (F1)no PURL / w3id / DOI for the artefact0
- Indexed in services (F4)not indexed anywhere0
- Citable reference (F2)doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.44+3
A Accessible FAIR9/12
- Homepage reachableHTTP 200+3
- Artefact retrievable over HTTP(S) (A1)download HTTP 200+6
- Metadata persists in a registry (A2)not in Bioregistry or OBO Foundry0
I Interoperable FAIR5/12
- Formal machine-readable format (I1)YAML schema+5
- Semantic-web IRIs (I2)no RDF/OWL/JSON-LD representation0
- References other vocabularies (I3)no imported vocabularies found0
R Reusable FAIR7/12
- Clear license (R1.1)CC BY 4.0+5
- Release provenance (R1.2)v1.11.2 (latest GitHub release); not declared inside the artefact+2
- Community standards (R1.3)no independent compliance report (not on the OBO Dashboard)0
Q Ontology consistency & qualityn/a
- Not applicabledata-standard without an OWL/OBO/RDF artefact; total scaled from 80 to 1000
M Maintenance13/16
- Recency2026-10-26 → 0.1 months (≤ 3 months)+10
- Release cadence (12 months)3 releases (GitHub releases)+3
U Community adoption10/16
- Documented adopting projects7 projects+5
- Reused by other ontologies00
- Community signalmax(stars 370 → 4, citations 1846 → 5)+5
P Penalties (inactivity & inconsistency)0
- Time since last activity0.0 years → 4 × max(0, 0.0 − 1)0
- Inactive statusnot archived, legacy or inactive0
FAIR subtotal 24/48 · earned 47/80 → scaled 59 = 59/100 → grade C
Community adoption 7
- OpenNeuro
Required dataset format
Curated by SchemaScope - fMRIPrep
BIDS App input
Curated by SchemaScope - MNE-BIDS
EEG/MEG BIDS conversion
Curated by SchemaScope - NEMAR
EEG/MEG/iEEG archive; its pipeline imports each BIDS dataset with EEG-BIDS
Curated by SchemaScope - EMBER Archive
EMBER project template is a BIDS study dataset
Curated by SchemaScope - brainlife.io (ezBIDS)
ezBIDS converts uploaded sessions to BIDS
Curated by SchemaScope - Neurobagel
bagel bids2tsv indexes BIDS datasets for federated search
Curated by SchemaScope
Know a project that uses BIDS? Suggest it.
Tooling
- BIDS ValidatorSchema-driven dataset validator
- bidsschematoolsPython package to load, render and export the schema
- PyBIDSPython library for querying BIDS datasets
History & changes 2 runs
Score over time
Metrics across runs
| 27 Oct 2026 rubric v3.5 | 26 Oct 2026 rubric v3.4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 59 | 54 |
| Findable | 3 | 3 |
| Accessible | 9 | 6 |
| Interoperable | 5 | 5 |
| Reusable | 7 | 7 |
| Quality | 0 | 0 |
| Maintenance | 13 | 13 |
| Adoption | 10 | 9 |
| Penalty | 0 | 0 |
| Imported vocabularies | 0 | 0 |
| Reused by | 0 | 0 |
Newest run first. Highlighted cells changed since the run before; hover to see the earlier value. A rubric change alone can move points.
- Adoption: 9 → 10 (+1)
- Accessible: 6 → 9 (+3)
- Download link: — → ok
- Documented adopters: 3 → 7
- Score: 54 → 59 (grade D → C) · rubric v3.4 → v3.5
Provenance
Every fact on this page was fetched automatically. Each row shows where it came from and when. If a source fails, the last good value is kept and marked “carried forward”.
| Fact | Source | Retrieved |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage link check (HTTP 200) | bids.neuroimaging.io | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Repository link check (HTTP 200) | github.com | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Download link check (HTTP 200) | bids-specification.readthedocs.io | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Artefact header | bids-specification.readthedocs.io | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Git refs (commit 8973fdf, latest tag schema-2.0.1) | github.com | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| GitHub repository statistics | api.github.com | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Crossref citations (doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.44) | api.crossref.org | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Crossref citations (doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0104-8) | api.crossref.org | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
| Crossref citations (doi:10.1093/gigascience/giaa104) | api.crossref.org | 27 Oct 2026, 21:58 UTC |
Run 2026-10-27T21-58-30Z · evaluator v2.0.0 · rubric v3.5 · entry.json · run snapshot
How to cite
- The brain imaging data structure, a format for organizing and describing outputs of neuroimaging experiments (2016) · doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.44 · 1,846 citations
- The past, present, and future of the brain imaging data structure (BIDS) (2024) · doi:10.1162/imag_a_00103
- EEG-BIDS, an extension to the brain imaging data structure for electroencephalography (2019) · doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0104-8 · 448 citations
- iEEG-BIDS, extending the Brain Imaging Data Structure specification to human intracranial electrophysiology (2019) · doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0105-7
- MEG-BIDS, the brain imaging data structure extended to magnetoencephalography (2018) · doi:10.1038/sdata.2018.110
- PET-BIDS, an extension to the brain imaging data structure for positron emission tomography (2022) · doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01164-1
- The genetics-BIDS extension: Easing the search for genetic data associated with human brain imaging (2020) · doi:10.1093/gigascience/giaa104 · 15 citations
- Microscopy-BIDS: An Extension to the Brain Imaging Data Structure for Microscopy Data (2022) · doi:10.3389/fnins.2022.871228
- qMRI-BIDS: An extension to the brain imaging data structure for quantitative magnetic resonance imaging data (2022) · doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01571-4
- ASL-BIDS, the brain imaging data structure extension for arterial spin labeling (2022) · doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01615-9
- NIRS-BIDS: Brain Imaging Data Structure Extended to Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (2025) · doi:10.1038/s41597-024-04136-9
- Motion-BIDS: an extension to the brain imaging data structure to organize motion data for reproducible research (2024) · doi:10.1038/s41597-024-03559-8
- MRS-BIDS, an extension to the Brain Imaging Data Structure for magnetic resonance spectroscopy (2025) · doi:10.1038/s41597-025-05543-2