Assessing value of biomedical digital repositories

, , ,
1 Medicine, Biomedical Informatics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States
2 SciCrunch Inc., San Diego, California, United States
3 University of California, San Diego, Center for Research In Biological Structure, La Jolla, California, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2688v2
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Digital Libraries, World Wide Web and Web Science
Keywords
citation, data citation, biomedical data repositories, scientific metrics, science policy
Copyright
© 2017 Hsu et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Hsu C, Bandrowski A, Grethe JS, Martone ME. 2017. Assessing value of biomedical digital repositories. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2688v2

Abstract

Digital repositories bring direct impact and influence on the research community and society but measuring their value using formal metrics remains challenging. their value. It is challenging to define a single perfect metric that covers all quality aspects. Here, we distinguish here between impact and influence and discuss measures and mentions as the basis of quality metrics of a digital repository. We argue that these challenges may potentially be overcome through the introduction of standard resource identification and data citation practices. We briefly summarize our research and experience in the Neuroscience Information Framework, the BD2K BioCaddie project on data citation, and the Resource Identification Initiative. Full implementation of these standards will depend on cooperation from all stakeholders --- digital repositories, authors, publishers, and funding agencies, but both resource and data citation have been gaining support with researchers and publishers.

Author Comment

Updated with latest statistics of RRIDs, RRID usage in publications, and rankings of highly mentioned RRIDs. Also added discussions of related work and improved writing.