Sizing the Problem of Improving Discovery and Access to NIH-Funded Data: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Objective

This study informs efforts to improve the discoverability of and access to biomedical datasets by providing a preliminary estimate of the number and type of datasets generated annually by research funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). It focuses on those datasets that are “invisible” or not deposited in a known repository.

Methods

We analyzed NIH-funded journal articles that were published in 2011, cited in PubMed and deposited in PubMed Central (PMC) to identify those that indicate data were submitted to a known repository. After excluding those articles, we analyzed a random sample of the remaining articles to estimate how many and what types of invisible datasets were used in each article.

Results

About 12% of the articles explicitly mention deposition of datasets in recognized repositories, leaving 88% that are invisible datasets…

Citation: Read KB, Sheehan JR, Huerta MF, Knecht LS, Mork JG, Humphreys BL, et al. (2015) Sizing the Problem of Improving Discovery and Access to NIH-Funded Data: A Preliminary Study. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0132735. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132735