DataSeer is excited to support BioFAIR in its new Monitoring and Evaluation project. BioFAIR is now in its second year as the UK’s national infrastructure for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) life science data. The organization, together with external consulting firm Research Consulting, aims to establish a benchmark of FAIR adoption across all the communities it serves. The goal: to better understand current practices, identify barriers, and track future progress.
DataSeer’s Open Science Metrics tool will play a key role in that research and analysis. Using AI and full-text Natural Language Processing, Open Science Metrics scans thousands of published articles and compiles accurate, detailed stats on open science adoption — uncovering behaviors that are invisible to traditional, citation-based tracking methods.
Tracking FAIR compliance is among the newest features of Open Science Metrics. Because the analysis is based on the full text of a research article, we’re able to surface cases where data were generated but not shared, and find instances where authors share data on a repository but bury the datasets identifiers in the Methods section or in the Supporting Information. In cases where data are publicly available, Open Science Metrics assesses FAIR compliance based on the features of the hosting repository and compiles a composite score across the corpus.
“Granting visibility into researcher practices is the first step toward establishing new norms that are more conducive to reproducibility, validation, reused, and, ultimately, stronger, faster research,” said DataSeer founder and CEO Tim Vines. “The more information we can put into the hands of publishers, funders, and providers, the more successful we can all be at supporting researchers, and building a scholarly communication system that better reflects scientific values and best practices.”
