UniProt: the universal protein knowledgebase in 2021 is a dataset published in Nucleic Acids Research (2020). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 10.8, placing it in the top 1% of the data-sharing corpus. It has been cited 7,078 times, with 100 citing works in its 1-hop citation network. Its calibrated FAIR score is 88/100.
Ranks in the top 1% for downstream scientific impact
Linked data & code
DataRank reads this dataset's downstream impact straight off the citation graph — no black box, no proprietary weighting. How is this computed?
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
Full FAIR picture · advisory
The headline score is computed from the scored criteria — the fact-shaped checks (a repository, an accession, a licence) that two independent models agree on. The advisory criteria below are real FAIR guidance but rest on judgment calls that models read differently, so they inform without moving the number.
“UniProt resources are available under a CC-BY (4.0) license via the web at https://www.uniprot.org/ .”
The only identifier given for the data is a web URL (https://www.uniprot.org/), which is not a persistent identifier scheme. [majority verdict 'partial' (4/5 passes agreed)]
RDA-F1-01D — FAIR Data Maturity Model: 'Data is identified by a persistent identifier' (priorit · RDA-F1-02D — FAIR Data Maturity Model: 'Data is identified by a globally unique identifier' · FsF-F1-02D — F-UJI/FAIRsFAIR: 'Data is assigned a persistent identifier'
“UniProt resources are available under a CC-BY (4.0) license via the web at https://www.uniprot.org/ .”
UniProt is named as the holder, and it is a known data repository listed in re3data.org. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
RDA-F4-01M — FAIR Data Maturity Model: metadata is offered so it can be harvested and indexed ( · NIH DMS Policy Element 4 (NOT-OD-21-014) — name the repository where data will be archived · NSTC Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories (2022) — 'Long-Term Sustainability', 'Reten
“UniProt resources are available under a CC-BY (4.0) license via the web at https://www.uniprot.org/ .”
The dataset's identifier (the URL) appears only in body text, not in the reference list. [majority verdict 'partial' (4/5 passes agreed)]
FORCE11 Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles (2014) — data should be cited as a first- · RDA-F3-01M — metadata clearly and explicitly includes the identifier of the data it describes · FsF-F3-01M — F-UJI: 'Metadata includes the identifier of the data it describes'
Advisory · not in the published score
“Due to the ever-increasing number of sequence records UniProt is processing with every release cycle, as of release 2020_01 (26 February 2020), UniProt releases are now published every eight weeks. This gives our production team the time required to complete data import, proteome redundancy removal, data checking, integration of external data and automatic annotation of unreviewed records prior to starting the release process. In addition to providing customizable views and downloads in a range of formats via the website, and file sets at the FTP site ( www.uniprot.org/downloads ), UniProt supplies users with a number of different options for computational access to the data ( www.uniprot.org/help/programmatic_access ).”
The Data Availability statement points to the UniProt website and FTP site, which is a repository record. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
Colavizza, Hrynaszkiewicz, Staden, Whitaker & McGillivray (2020), 'The citation advantage of li · Springer Nature research data policy — Data Availability Statements: standard statement templat · RDA-F3-01M — metadata clearly and explicitly includes the identifier of the data it describes
“UniProt release 2020_04 contains over 189 million sequence records (Figure 1 ), with >292 000 proteomes”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The dataset's extent is described in running prose, not in an itemised inventory or table. [downgraded to 'no' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'no' (3/5 passes agreed)]
RDA-F2-01M — 'Rich metadata is provided to allow discovery' (priority Essential) · FsF-F2-01M — F-UJI: 'Metadata includes descriptive core elements to support data findability' · FsF-R1-01MD — F-UJI: 'Metadata specifies the content of the data'
“UniProt resources are available under a CC-BY (4.0) license via the web at https://www.uniprot.org/ .”
The data are stated to be freely available under an open license with no precondition. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
RDA-A1.1-01D — 'Data is accessible through a free access protocol' · FsF-A1-01M — F-UJI: 'Metadata contains access level and access conditions of the data' · NSTC Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories (2022) — 'Free and Easy Access'
Advisory · not in the published score
“UniProt resources are available under a CC-BY (4.0) license via the web at https://www.uniprot.org/ .”
The paper explicitly labels the data as 'freely accessible' and under a CC-BY (4.0) license, which are open access labels.
FsF-A1-01M — F-UJI: 'Metadata contains access level and access conditions of the data' · RDA-A1-01M — metadata contains information to enable the user to get access to the data · COAR Controlled Vocabularies — Access Rights v1.0 (open / embargoed / restricted / metadata-onl
The data are protein sequences and not human-subject or sensitive data; no gatekeeper is named because none is needed.
NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy (NOT-OD-14-124) — controlled-access via a Data Access Committee · RDA-A1.2-01D — 'Data is accessible through an access protocol that supports authentication and · NIH DMS Policy Element 5 (NOT-OD-21-014) — Access, Distribution, or Reuse Considerations (conse
No sentence in the paper states how long the data will remain available or gives a retention period. [majority verdict 'no' (3/5 passes agreed)]
NIH DMS Plan Element 4 (NOT-OD-21-014) — Data Preservation, Access, and Associated Timelines · NSTC Desirable Characteristics (2022), Organizational Infrastructure: 'Retention Policy' · RDA-A2-01M — 'Metadata is guaranteed to remain available after data is no longer available'
“making data available in a number of community recognised formats, such as text, XML and RDF”
The paper lists open standard formats including XML, RDF, and FASTA for the data.
FsF-R1.3-02D — F-UJI: 'Data is available in a file format recommended by the target research co · RDA-R1.3-02D — data is expressed in a machine-understandable community standard · RDA-I1-01D — data uses a knowledge representation expressed in a standardised format
Advisory · not in the published score
“such as the Gene Ontology (GO)”
The paper names the Gene Ontology, a community data standard, as applied to the data. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
RDA-R1.3-01M — 'Metadata complies with a community standard' (priority Essential) · RDA-R1.3-01D — 'Data complies with a community standard' · RDA-I2-01M — '(Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles'
“accession number MN908947”
The paper includes an identifier (INSDC accession MN908947) for a resource other than its own dataset.
RDA-I3-01M — '(meta)data include references to other (meta)data' · RDA-I3-03M — 'metadata includes qualified references to other metadata' · FsF-I3-01M — F-UJI: 'Metadata includes links between the data and its related entities'
“UniProt resources are available under a CC-BY (4.0) license”
The data is licensed under CC-BY (4.0), an open standard license.
RDA-R1.1-01M — 'Metadata includes information about the licence under which the data can be reu · RDA-R1.1-02M — 'Metadata refers to a standard reuse licence' · RDA-R1.1-03M — 'Metadata refers to a machine-understandable reuse licence'
“UniProt release 2020_04 contains over 189 million sequence records”
The paper identifies the specific data snapshot by release version (2020_04).
DataCite Metadata Schema 4.6 — the 'Version' property · RDA-R1.2-01M — provenance information (which version was used is provenance) · NSTC Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories (2022) — 'Provenance', 'Retention Policy'
“UniFIRE is an open-source Java-based framework and tool developed to apply the UniProt annotation rules on given protein sequences and provided by UniProt to share our knowledge in computational annotation and our rule-based systems ( https://gitlab.ebi.ac.uk/uniprot-public/unifire ).”
The paper provides a machine-resolvable URL (GitLab) for the study's own code. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
NIH DMS Policy Element 2 (NOT-OD-21-014) — 'Related Tools, Software and/or Code' · FAIR4RS Principles v1.0 (Chue Hong et al., 2022; RDA/FORCE11/ReSA) — FAIR Principles for Resear · FORCE11 Software Citation Principles (Smith, Katz & Niemeyer, 2016, PeerJ CS 2:e86)
“National Institutes of Health [U24HG007822]”
The paper lists specific award/grant numbers (e.g., U24HG007822) for the funding.
DataCite Metadata Schema 4.6 — 'FundingReference' property (funderName, funderIdentifier, award · Crossref Funder Registry — canonical funder identifiers for funding metadata · RDA-F2-01M — rich metadata provided to allow discovery (funding is part of the descriptive reco
Advisory · not in the published score
“We have adopted the MMseqs2 algorithm to improve the speed of UniRef production”
The paper names specific tools and algorithms (e.g., MMseqs2, BUSCO v3, ARBA) used to produce the data.
RDA-R1.2-01M — 'Metadata includes provenance information according to community- specific standa · FsF-R1.2-01M — F-UJI: 'Metadata includes provenance information about data creation or generati · W3C PROV-O (W3C Recommendation, 2013) — the entity/activity/agent model of provenance
No documentation object (README, codebook, data dictionary) is named as travelling with the data, and no variable-definition table is provided. [majority verdict 'no' (4/5 passes agreed)]
RDA-R1-01M — '(Meta)data are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attribu · FsF-R1-01MD — F-UJI: 'Metadata specifies the content of the data' · NIH DMS Policy Element 3 (NOT-OD-21-014) — Standards (documentation and metadata to accompany t
Calibrated FAIR score — a parallel quality metric, independent of the DataRank citation score. See the full evaluation →
Base Score Contribution
1.3
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
9.5
From 100 citing papers with measurable signal
Ranked by each citer's contribution to N(p) — log1p(Cq) divided by its reference count — out of 100 citers.
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
Grant: P20GM103446
NHGRI NIH HHS
Grant: U41 HG002273
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Grant: BB/M011674/1
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Grant: BB/T010541/1
18-BBSRC-NSF/BIO : CIBR:Implementing an explicit phylogenetic framework for large-scale protein sequence annotation
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
Grant: R01GM080646
National Institutes of Health
Grant: U24HG007822
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Grant: BB/S01781X/1
British Heart Foundation
Grant: RG/13/5/30112
National Institutes of Health
Grant: 5U24HG007822-12
UniProt: A Protein Sequence and Function Resource for Biomedical Science
National Institutes of Health
Grant: 5R01GM080646-12
PRO: A Protein Ontology in OBO Foundry for Scalable Integration of Biomedical Knowledge
National Institutes of Health
Grant: 4U41HG002273-16
Gene Ontology Consortium
National Institutes of Health
Grant: 5P20GM103446-15
Bioinformatics Core
Open Targets
National Cancer Institute
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
National Eye Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Swiss Federal Government
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
FWCI
381.28
Citation Percentile
1.0%
Citation Trend
Fields of Study
MeSH Terms
Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals