Measuring the impact of the Bioregistry | Biopragmatics

[utterances-bot]

Measuring the impact of the Bioregistry | Biopragmatics

The Bioregistry is a database and toolchain for standardization of prefixes, CURIEs, and URIs that appear in linked (open) data. While I created it in 2019 as a component of PyOBO in order to support parsing database cross-references appearing in biomedical ontologies, it has since become an independent project with a community-driven governance model and much broader applications. This post is a first attempt to quantify its usage and impact.

https://cthoyt.com/2025/08/22/bioregistry-impact.html

[egonw]

Measuring impact remains a pretty hard effort, and I like the overview you give. Citations provide a unique aspect here, as they are often heralded as a measure of quality. Second level citations are tempting and I have used this is the past too, but suffer from the same problem (just more in absolute terms) that a citation can be positive and negative. This is exactly why I have been promiting the adoption of the Citation Typing Ontology. But even then, it remains complex. I cannot really read what is in the "Distribution of 2,667 references" plot, but let's assume it included citations to the WikiPathways paper(s?), and even focus on those where WikiPathways is actually used (rather than just cited), then this does not at all mean use of the Bioregistry.io functionality in WikiPathways. Next weekend, at the Wikicite 2025 meeting, I will give an update on where we are with CiTO.