Agreed Reporting Template for EEG Methodology - International Standard: template for event-related potentials (ERP)

The goal of the ARTEM-IS is to use insights derived from systematic reviews and guidelines for good checklist design to create dynamic and user-friendly web applications which support EEG researchers in creating detailed human- and machine-readable methods summaries. Currently, ARTEM-IS has launched the first of its tools, ARTEM-IS for ERP, which supports describing a simple ERP experiment, including most of its core methodological aspects (study description, experimental design, hardware, data acquisition, pre-processing, measurement, visualisation, additional comments – artemis.incf.org). ARTEM-IS tools for more complex ERP experiments as well as for other subfields of EEG may follow.

How to use it

1. The web-app is available HERE.
2. On the initial page, you can create your account and log in, as well as view a visualization of the basic structure of the information provided in the template.
3. Once logged in, by clicking Create in the top right corner, you can create a new, blank template.
4. You can navigate a template by using the menu on top and answer the questions corresponding to the study you are reporting on. This is meant to ensure that you have not forgotten any of the essential information during data collection or later in the methods and results parts of your article.
5. Click Save in the top right corner to save any changes.
6. You can view your own saved templates using My templates option. For each template, you have the options to make them publicly (in)visible to others, download a human-readable PDF output and download a machine-readable JSON output. All templates are set to private in the beginning.
7. You can view and download publicly available templates by other members using Browse menu.
8. You can upload a previously downloaded (in JSON format) templates to your account using Upload menu.

You can find output examples on the OSF page of this project.

Why this project?

It is well known that choices made during recording, preprocessing and analysis of EEG data can affect study outcomes, making it critical to describe EEG methods and the decision-making process thoroughly and transparently. Transparent methods records would allow not only better reproducibility and replicability of EEG research or a better appraisal of the quality of existing studies, but also provide a better basis for novel research, for example by providing meta-scientists with relevant information on published studies. Researchers new to the field of EEG may especially benefit from transparent and thorough reports of EEG studies, as some of them are not beneficiaries of the decades of knowledge contained in unpublished materials like ‘lab handbooks’ which may be passed down in labs with longer traditions.

Despite this, systematic reviews of reporting practices in the field have shown that journal articles do not meet this goal and that guidelines for writing them better have not resulted in a sufficient improvement to reporting transparency. ARTEM-IS is designed to help with this issue as ARTEM-IS reports contain a level of reporting precision higher than what is typically found in journal articles, which can be used as supplements to a publication, as a memory aid when writing a paper, or as records that allow easier metadata extraction in comparison to verbal descriptions in papers.

Want to know more ?

Read more about the rationale for this project and the design principles we go by in our paper, and if you agree support us by signing the ARTEM-IS statement.

1. Have a look at our project on OSF.
2. Talks and slides are available HERE.
3. See CONTRIBUTING.md for information on how to contribute.