EAGER: The Digital Resource Impact, Validation and Evolution (DRIVE) Project

生物信息学社区为存储和分析数据(即可下载的软件、网络服务器和在线数据库--也称为“数字产品”)创建的可上网数字资源(DR)是现代科学研究、创新和生产力的组成部分。DRS对科学的影响是毋庸置疑的--在过去的12年里，一篇描述DR发展的出版物曾七次跻身被引用最多的年度科学出版物前三名。但是，尽管DRS正在以越来越快的速度被创建，我们和其他人已经发现，它们往往会以一种依赖于时间的方式变得不可访问(即，“衰败”)。DRS是现代数据分析和科学生产力的核心，因此必须更好地了解哪些因素与科学界的衰败、维护、进一步发展和利用/采用有关。这个项目将开发方法来确定DR的竞争生态位，然后根据这些方法对它们进行分类，并随着时间的推移与类似的DR进行比较，并将确定与DR成功和衰退相关的因素以及DR缺失对科学研究和科学记录的影响。DR衰退不仅代表着从开发这些资源所花费的时间、专业知识和资金方面的科学资源的损失，而且还对使用这些资源的研究的重现性构成潜在威胁。该项目将通过将灾难恢复放在历史背景中，并确定与灾难恢复成功和失败相关的因素，帮助从几个角度理解这一问题。这项研究的结果将提高对DRS的影响、使用、稳定性和演变的科学理解，并为了解学术研究人员开发DRS的动机如何与DR的最终结果相关奠定基础。

Internet-accessible Digital Resources (DR) created by the bioinformatics community for storage and analysis of data (i.e., downloadable software, web servers and online databases -- also called "digital products") are an integral part of modern scientific research, innovation and productivity. The impact of DRs on science is indisputable -- a publication describing the development of a DR was among the annual top 3 most cited scientific publications seven times during the past twelve years. But despite the increasing rate by which DRs are being created, we and others have found that they tend to become inaccessible (i.e., "decay") in a time-dependent manner. DRs are so central to modern data analysis and scientific productivity that it is important to better understand what factors correlate with decay, maintenance, further development and utilization/adoption by the scientific community. This project will develop methods to define competitive niches for DRs by which they can then be categorized, compared and contrasted with similar DRs over time, and will identify factors that correlate with DR success and decay as well as approximate the impact of DR loss on scientific research and the scientific record.DR decay represents not just a loss of scientific resources in terms of the time, expertise and money it cost to develop them, but also a potential threat to the reproducibility of studies that used them. This project will help to understand this issue from several perspectives by putting DRs within a historical context and identifying factors that correlate with DR success and failure. The results of this research will improve scientific understanding of the impact, use, stability and evolution of DRs and lay the groundwork to help understand how incentives for academic researchers to develop DRs correlate with the eventual outcome of the DR.