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.
