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bids-standard / bids-2-devel

Discussions and suggestions of backwards incompatible changes to BIDS
https://bids.neuroimaging.io/
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Homogenize "Subject" Nomenclature #14

Open tsalo opened 3 years ago

tsalo commented 3 years ago

We are currently using the terms “participant” and “subject” interchangeably. I propose we make the names homogeneous. In order to afford better extendability with preclinical research, the term “subject” would be significantly more apt. GitHub Issue: https://github.com/bids-standard/bids-specification/issues/384

This change would include renaming the participants.tsv file to subjects.tsv, and the participant_id column in said file to subject.

Original authors: @TheChymera

TheChymera commented 3 years ago

@tsalo thank you for bringing this up. While the urgency from my side (and that of other preclinical researchers using SAMRI) has decreased following our begrudging adoption of this element of the standard, I would again recommend this as a worthwhile change.

HenkMutsaerts commented 11 months ago

I agree with this point, just brought this up with @Remi-Gau who pointed me to this issue (thanks!). Though note that some prefer participant over subject as the latter can be derogatory. I understand that participant is tricky with preclinical research, perhaps sample would be most neutral (and generalizable) but subject would be OK with me at least.

yarikoptic commented 5 months ago

In the light of the BEP032 (attn @bids-standard/bep032 and here #38) for animal ephys subject would also be more appropriate. So I think it is a valid target for the "immediate" BIDS 2.0 with easy "auto upgrade" path.

SylvainTakerkart commented 5 months ago

I agree with this point, just brought this up with @Remi-Gau who pointed me to this issue (thanks!). Though note that some prefer participant over subject as the latter can be derogatory. I understand that participant is tricky with preclinical research, perhaps sample would be most neutral (and generalizable) but subject would be OK with me at least.

just for info, "sample" is already used in BIDS (for pre-clinical research, i.e to specify that several "samples", e.g tissue slices, can be extracted from the same "subject" (animal)...

yarikoptic commented 5 months ago

FTR, another definitely non-participant'y and even overall inanimate use-case came up yesterday in

so there "subject" IMHO still works as (inanimate) "subject of study".