Informed Archiving

Informed Archiving is the fourth pillar of Informed Electrophysiology. It ensures that quality intelligence persists in the archive alongside the raw data, making datasets searchable by signal characteristics, not just experimental parameters.

Why it matters: Electrophysiology archives grow rapidly with modern high-density probes, but their value does not scale proportionally because the metadata needed for reuse is typically absent. When quality metrics, assessment results, and provenance records are embedded in the archive, the data becomes findable ('show me sessions with SNR > 8 dB on at least 20 channels'), longitudinally analyzable ('plot unit yield decay across this chronic preparation'), and interpretable by anyone — not just the person who recorded it.

FAIR alignment: Informed Archiving aligns with FAIR data principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) by ensuring that quality metadata travels with the dataset through NWB export or other archival formats.

Implementation: Radiens Curate handles archive organization; Summa provides quality-based classification. NWB export includes quality metadata as standard.