The Gene Ontology knowledgebase in 2026 is a dataset published in Nucleic Acids Research (2025). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 0.743, placing it in the top 27.1% of the data-sharing corpus. It has been cited 95 times, with 95 citing works in its 1-hop citation network. Its calibrated FAIR score is 79/100.
Ranks in the top 27% 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.
“doi:10.5281/zenodo.16423886”
The paper provides a DOI for the dataset release, which is a persistent identifier. [majority verdict 'yes' (3/5 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'
“Releases of the ontology and annotations are archived at https://release.geneontology.org/ and on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1205166).”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
Zenodo is a named data repository that issues accessions and commits to retention. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (2/5 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
No identifier for this study's data appears anywhere. [majority verdict 'no' (3/5 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
“All Gene Ontology code and resources are freely available for download and reuse. Software (https://github.com/geneontology) is under the BSD 3-Clause open-source license. Downloads are available under the CC BY 4.0 license from https://geneontology.org/docs/downloads/.”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The statement provides a link to the repository where data are archived, corresponding to Colavizza category 3. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (2/5 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
“Table 3. Current status and changes to GO terms in the past three year period”
The paper includes an itemised inventory of the dataset's content in a table, fulfilling the description requirement. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 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'
“All Gene Ontology code and resources are freely available for download and reuse.”
The data availability statement declares the data freely available with no stated 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
“Downloads are available under the CC BY 4.0 license from https://geneontology.org/docs/downloads/.”
The paper explicitly labels the data as available under a CC BY 4.0 license, which is an open-access label. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
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
No sensitive data is involved.
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 persistence or timing statement for this study's data. [majority verdict 'no' (2/5 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'
“go-basic OBO, JSON, and OWL-RDF/XML”
The paper names OBO, JSON, and OWL-RDF/XML, all of which are open, non-proprietary formats. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
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
“The Gene Ontology (GO) knowledgebase is a comprehensive resource describing the functions of genes.”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The Gene Ontology itself is a community standard for gene function annotation. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (3/5 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'
No own dataset to qualify references to other resources. [majority verdict 'no' (3/5 passes agreed)]
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'
“Downloads are available under the CC BY 4.0 license from https://geneontology.org/docs/downloads/.”
The data are released under the open CC BY 4.0 license. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
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'
“We report here the release of version 2.0 of the PAN-GO functionome”
The paper provides version tokens (e.g., version 2.0, release date) for the data. [majority verdict 'yes' (3/5 passes agreed)]
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'
“Software (https://github.com/geneontology) is under the BSD 3-Clause open-source license.”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The paper gives a machine-resolvable code repository URL for the software. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (2/5 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)
“The core funding for the GOC is from the National Human Genome Research Institute (U41HG002273, U24HG012212).”
The paper includes specific grant numbers for the work.
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
“There are also several computational pipelines that produce annotations using more indirect evidence, many of which are carefully reviewed by experts to ensure accuracy, e.g. InterPro2GO [21] or rule-based approaches, such as UniRule [22].”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The paper names specific tools and pipelines used to generate the data. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (2/5 passes agreed)]
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
“Table 2. GO ontology editions”
Variable definitions are provided inside the article via tables, but no separate documentation object is named as accompanying the data. [majority verdict 'partial' (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
0.685
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
0.0584
From 5 citing papers with measurable signal
Ranked by each citer's contribution to N(p) — log1p(Cq) divided by its reference count — out of 95 citers.
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U41HG002273
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG012212
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG002659
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG002223
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U41HG000739
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG001315
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG000330
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG012198
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: U24HG011851
National Human Genome Research Institute
Grant: R01HL064541
UK Medical Research Council
Grant: MR/W024233/1
GO annotation: maximizing the potential of Drosophila research to benefit human health
Wellcome Trust
Grant: 218 236/Z/19/Z
Xenbase
Grant: P41 HD064556
DARPA
Grant: U24HG010859
U.S. Department of Energy
Grant: DE-AC02-05CH11231
National Institutes of Health
Grant: U01HG012680
National Institutes of Health
Grant: U24HG007822
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
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Grant: BB/S01781X/1
BBSRC-NSF/BIO PTMeXchange: Globally harmonized re-analysis and sharing of data on post-translational modifications
NHGRI NIH HHS
Grant: P41 HG003751
NIA NIH HHS
National Eye Institute
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre
Alliance of Genome Resources Central
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
NEI NIH HHS
NIDDK NIH HHS
Wellcome Trust
Child Health and Human Development
National Institute on Aging
State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation
Office of Basic Energy Sciences
National Cancer Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
NIGMS NIH HHS
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute
NCI NIH HHS
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
USDA
University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre
State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation
NIA NIH HHS
NIGMS NIH HHS
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
USDA
NEI NIH HHS
Alliance of Genome Resources Central
Child Health and Human Development
NCI NIH HHS
Wellcome Trust
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute
NIDDK NIH HHS
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Office of Basic Energy Sciences
FWCI
42.11
Citation Percentile
1.0%
Citation Trend
Fields of Study
MeSH Terms
Keywords