Infrastructure in service of enquiry.
Fylgja is being developed in Gothenburg, Sweden, around a practical difficulty in behavioural neuroscience: the work of maintaining an analysis environment can compete with the work of designing and interpreting an experiment.
Its purpose is to bring the measurement chain into a shared workspace, while keeping the source material and analytical decisions available for scrutiny.
Three principles guide the work.
Simplicity
A research tool should make the next step apparent. Each stage should be understandable without requiring the researcher to reconstruct its internal machinery.
Functionality
The workflow must connect source material to usable artefacts. An interface is useful only insofar as the underlying analysis can be run and inspected.
Traceability
A result should disclose the method that produced it, the changes made along the way and the observations on which it depends.
The name.
In Norse tradition, a fylgja is a spirit that accompanies a person. The name reflects the intended role of the platform: to accompany the research process and keep a record of its course.
Further reading.
For the analysis workflow, see Methodology. For the measurements and how to read them, see Evidence. The Platform page describes the workspace and the steps required to begin a project.