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

由生物信息学社区创建的可通过互联网访问的数字资源（DR），用于存储和分析数据（即，下载软件、网络服务器和在线数据库-也称为“数字产品”-是现代科学研究、创新和生产力的一个组成部分。DR对科学的影响是无可争议的--在过去的12年里，描述DR发展的出版物七次跻身年度最受引用的3大科学出版物之列。但是，尽管DR的创建速度越来越快，我们和其他人发现它们往往变得无法访问（即，“衰减”）。DR是现代数据分析和科学生产力的核心，因此更好地了解哪些因素与科学界的衰变，维护，进一步开发和利用/采用相关非常重要。该项目将开发方法来定义DR的竞争性利基，然后通过这些方法将DR与类似的DR进行分类、比较和对比，并将确定与DR成功和衰退相关的因素，以及DR损失对科学研究和科学记录的影响。DR衰退不仅代表了时间上的科学资源损失，开发它们不仅需要专业知识和资金，而且对使用它们的研究的可重复性也是一个潜在的威胁。本项目将通过将DR置于历史背景中并确定与DR成功和失败相关的因素，从多个角度帮助理解此问题。这项研究的结果将提高对DR的影响、使用、稳定性和演变的科学理解，并为帮助理解学术研究人员开发DR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.