From the newsletter – Going through the (loco)motions: Open science and public data

In an age where fake news is King, science communication has become a crucial skill in bridging the gap between fact, fiction, and the hyperbole that sits between. Open access publishing has broadened the reach of our findings to new audiences and with it a responsibility of researchers to ensure work is published in a clear and transparent form. Journals are updating and adopting new guidelines that focus on transparency and provide researchers with the tools to achieve this. One of these tools is the sharing of data sets. Not only does this provide other researchers with the capacity to cross-reference findings and reproduce analyses, but also gives quick access to generalized data that can be used for anything from teaching purposes to machine learning.

To show how easy it is, here’s a quick list of available data sets we found online for posture and gait.

HuGaDB: Human Gait Database for Activity Recognition from Wearable Inertial  Sensor Networks

Full body mobile brain-body imaging data during unconstrained locomotion on stairs, ramps, and level ground

An elaborate data set on human gait and the effect of mechanical perturbations

A public data set of human balance evaluations

A public dataset of overground and treadmill walking kinematics and kinetics in healthy individuals

A data set with kinematic and ground reaction forces of human balance

A public dataset of running biomechanics and the effects of running speed on lower extremity kinematics and kinetics

Can’t find what you are looking for? Google just announced a searchable database of data sets here!

Contributors: Sjoerd Bruijn (@sjoerdmb), Alexander Stamenkovic