U-Index, a dataset and an impact metric for informatics tools and databases

Sci Data. 2018 Mar 20:5:180043. doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.43.

Abstract

Measuring the usage of informatics resources such as software tools and databases is essential to quantifying their impact, value and return on investment. We have developed a publicly available dataset of informatics resource publications and their citation network, along with an associated metric (u-Index) to measure informatics resources' impact over time. Our dataset differentiates the context in which citations occur to distinguish between 'awareness' and 'usage', and uses a citing universe of open access publications to derive citation counts for quantifying impact. Resources with a high ratio of usage citations to awareness citations are likely to be widely used by others and have a high u-Index score. We have pre-calculated the u-Index for nearly 100,000 informatics resources. We demonstrate how the u-Index can be used to track informatics resource impact over time. The method of calculating the u-Index metric, the pre-computed u-Index values, and the dataset we compiled to calculate the u-Index are publicly available.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Associated data

  • Dryad/10.5061/dryad.gj651