The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations
The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations is a dataset published in PLOS ONE (2016). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 6.8, placing it in the top 2.8% of the data-sharing corpus. It has been cited 390 times, with 100 citing works in its 1-hop citation network. Its calibrated FAIR score is 75/100.
Ranks in the top 3% for downstream scientific impact
DataRank reads this dataset's downstream impact straight off the citation graph — no black box, no proprietary weighting. How is this computed?
›Methodology & internals
FAIR Checklist
Context only (not used in score)- Has DOI
- Open Access
- Dataset classification
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.
“The current release of OBI is available at http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/obi.owl”
The identifier is a PURL (web address) not a DOI, Handle, or other 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'
“Releases of OBI are also uploaded to the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) BioPortal and the Ontobee repository at http://www.ontobee.org/”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The paper names NCBO BioPortal, a curated repository, as a holder of the data. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (3/5 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
“The current release of OBI is available at http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/obi.owl”
The dataset identifier appears only in body text, not as a reference-list entry. [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
“All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.”
The data availability statement points to the article itself, not a repository record (Colavizza category 2). [majority verdict 'partial' (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
“The OBI 2015-10-20 release includes 2366 classes, 84 individuals, and 40 relations (owl:objectProperties) native to OBI plus 556 classes, 94 individuals, and 59 relations imported from 20 ontologies and the Relations Ontology (RO).”
The dataset content is described in running prose, not as an itemised inventory or section. [majority verdict 'partial' (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'
“OBI is publicly and freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-by) 3.0 license.”
The text states the data are publicly and freely available with no precondition.
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
“OBI is publicly and freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-by) 3.0 license.”
The paper explicitly labels the data as 'publicly and freely available' and states the license, which is an access-level label.
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 not sensitive or human-subject, and no gatekeeper is named.
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
“The current release of OBI is available at http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/obi.owl”
The paper states availability but does not commit to a retention period or permanent archival. [majority verdict 'no' (4/5 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'
“OBI is expressed in the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-overview/), which is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C; http://www.w3.org) ontology language developed for the semantic web.”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The data format is OWL, an open W3C standard format. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (3/5 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
“OBI addresses the requirement for a cross-disciplinary standard for representing biomedical investigations.”
OBI itself is a community standard ontology, and the paper explicitly states it as a standard. [majority verdict 'yes' (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 explicit identifier (DOI, accession, RRID) for an external resource is provided; only names and bibliographic references are given. [majority verdict 'no' (4/5 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'
“OBI is publicly and freely available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-by) 3.0 license.”
The license is an open standard licence (CC BY 3.0).
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'
“The OBI 2015-10-20 release includes 2366 classes”
The paper provides a release date (2015-10-20) and a version number (1.0). [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'
“The current development version of OBI is available at http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/obi/repository”
A machine-resolvable URL for the code repository is given. [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)
“R01AI081062 to YH”
Award numbers are provided for the funding. [majority verdict 'yes' (4/5 passes agreed)]
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
“These include the comprehensive OWL Application Program Interface (API) Java library and the Protégé-OWL (http://protege.stanford.edu/overview/protege-owl.html) graphical editor that builds upon it.”— not found in the paper; verdict downgraded
The paper names specific tools (Protégé-OWL) used to produce the ontology. [downgraded to 'partial' — no verifiable quote from the paper] [majority verdict 'partial' (4/5 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 1 Example metadata for class OBI_0000795.”
Variable definitions are provided inside the article (Table 1), not as a separate documentation object shipped with the data. [majority verdict 'partial' (3/5 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 →
DataRank Breakdown
Base Score Contribution
0.895
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
5.9
From 100 citing papers with measurable signal
Top 5 citers driving the network score
Ranked by each citer's contribution to N(p) — log1p(Cq) divided by its reference count — out of 100 citers.
- First steps towards an ontology of beliefHAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)20187 citations6 referencesContributes 0.347
- The Story of an Experiment: A Provenance-based Semantic Approach towards Research ReproducibilityOpen MIND201814 citations9 referencesContributes 0.301
- Towards the semantic formalization of science202021 citations17 referencesContributes 0.182
- Representation of behaviour change interventions and their evaluation: Development of the Upper Level of the Behaviour Change Intervention OntologyWellcome Open Research202078 citations26 referencesContributes 0.168
- Ontology-Driven Metadata Enrichment for Genomic DatasetsINDIGO (University of Illinois at Chicago)201812 citations16 referencesContributes 0.160