Proposal
Deadline
September 15th 2026After signing up to participate in the initiative, submit a short proposal by September 15th 2026. In this proposal you outline how you plan to replicate and generalize the study you chose. Please stay close to the template we provide below. The proposal should contain the following information:
Information about the original study you replicate
In your proposal, please document the most important things about the study you are replicating. This includes the data that was used, the main findings of the study, and the methods they used to obtain these results.
How do you intend to replicate the study
Please outline how you intend to replicate each of the main findings of the original study. Also indicate if there is any metadata that has to be generated for your replication. Please be especially specific about things from the original study you need to adapt or if there are parts of the paper that cannot be replicated using LAION-fMRI (e.g. additional findings from monkey data).
How do you intend to generalize the study
Our aim is to not just test replication but also generalization. This entails testing the same results on different subsections of the dataset. You can either define a sensible subsection of the data yourself or choose from those we outline in our section on generalization. Please briefly outline how you intend to test the generalizability of one or more findings of the study you chose. If a generalization test is not applicable to the study you chose, please briefly indicate why.
General questions
We also ask you to answer some general questions beforehand about you and your experience with neuroimaging research. We also want to know what you expect to find in this generalization attempt.
Report
Deadline
February 15th 2027After conducting your replication (and generalization), you write and submit a report that contains your results. We also want to know what your conclusion is and if you can isolate any limitations of your replication attempt. Just as for the proposal we ask you to stay close to the template we provide below. The report should contain the following information:
Results of the replication
Report your results for the replication of each finding. Please directly contrast your results with those of the original study in terms of statistics, effect size, and overall pattern. Please also indicate to what extent you think each finding replicated.
Results of the generalization
Report the results of your generalization and if your findings add anything to our interpretation of the study.
Conclusion & Limitations
Do your findings change the interpretation of the original study? Also indicate why you think certain findings replicated or did not replicate. What limitations do you see in your own replication attempt?
General questions
As in the proposal, we have some general questions about your experience with the replication. Please also include any additional comments you have about your results or your replication.