Pragmatic YODA: overview of YODA principles and their wild life encounters

YODA principle a day, keeps gray hair rate at bay

YODA Principles were formulated in 2018 as a poster for a human neuroimaging conference, and later became covered in the DataLad Handbook. Despite that exposure, YODA principles remain largely unknown in the community although might naturally be thought to be ’ecological’ and followed in the scientific practice by many researchers. Under the tagline ‘A YODA principle a day keeps gray hair rate at bay,’ the presentation will cover essential YODA concepts and demonstrate their real-world application using tools like DataLad, and reviewing some prominent examples such as OpenNeuroDerivatives presented last distribits. We will further showcase supporting tools like con/duct while providing practical tips for sticking to YODA principles in day-to-day scientific workflows. By relating and potentially contrasting these principles to other hierarchical organization standards (e.g. FHS and XDG Base Directory) we hope to provide insights into creating more maintainable and reproducible research data resources.