Database Commons: A Catalog of Worldwide Biological Databases.
Lina Ma, Dong Zou, Lin Liu, Huma Shireen, Amir A Abbasi, Alex Bateman, Jingfa Xiao, Wenming Zhao, Yiming Bao, Zhang Zhang
Author Information
Lina Ma: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. Electronic address: malina@big.ac.cn.
Dong Zou: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China.
Lin Liu: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China.
Huma Shireen: National Center for Bioinformatics, Programme of Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.
Amir A Abbasi: National Center for Bioinformatics, Programme of Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad 45320, Pakistan.
Alex Bateman: European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, United Kingdom.
Jingfa Xiao: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Wenming Zhao: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Yiming Bao: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Zhang Zhang: National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing 100101, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. Electronic address: zhangzhang@big.ac.cn.
Biological databases serve as a global fundamental infrastructure for the worldwide scientific community, which dramatically aid the transformation of big data into knowledge discovery and drive significant innovations in a wide range of research fields. Given the rapid data production, biological databases continue to increase in size and importance. To build a catalog of worldwide biological databases, we curate a total of 5825 biological databases from 8931 publications, which are geographically distributed in 72 countries/regions and developed by 1975 institutions (as of September 20, 2022). We further devise a z-index, a novel index to characterize the scientific impact of a database, and rank all these biological databases as well as their hosting institutions and countries in terms of citation and z-index. Consequently, we present a series of statistics and trends of worldwide biological databases, yielding a global perspective to better understand their status and impact for life and health sciences. An up-to-date catalog of worldwide biological databases, as well as their curated meta-information and derived statistics, is publicly available at Database Commons (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/databasecommons/).
