Dirk Derom is a grad student in psychology at VUW who is creating a meta-analysis tool for the cognitive sciences -
Abstract:
Metaneva ( http://metaneva.org) tries to map paradigm data with functional attribution based on paradigm elements instead of on researcher functional bias. You could rewrite this as follows: functional attribution (e.g. brain area X does function Z: orbitofrontal does 'decision coding' in the brain) is now based on interpretations of previous studies (e.g. a study that said this brain area does this). But, the actual data (e.g. the specific experiment with specific stimuli, tasks, species...) is lost, since for a human it is impossible to hold all data of every experiment. So, a researcher does the following: remember the conclusions of previous research (e.g. orbitofrontal does decision), build his own experiment (does the orbitofrontal also do this particular decision) and create his own conclusions. Informatics can of course do a more thorough analysis, by mimicking this individual researcher tactics and add a impressive data source to it (incorporate paradigm data such as stimuli....). We know our first queries and are already writing out the second queries. This simply means: we (conceptually) know how to mimic research tactics for 2 queries and are awaiting for translating them into codes.
We recently decided to open source the tool and I could very much use advice on how to translate concept into practice.