Recommendation #5:  Measure citation counts and PID use as a tool for understanding and assessing impact of data repositories, and of FAIR initiatives.

PIDs are intended to provide linkages to original resources as much as they are used as tools for tracing impact. With such linkages, it becomes easier to perform micro impact assessment: at the PID level (e.g. how frequently a specific resource was used/cited in important work), as well as macro impact assessment: at the repository level (e.g. how many of the PIDs in a repository have been used/cited in important work). These assessments are an important tool for demonstrating value, but they are also increasingly automated and when repositories are able to improve their FAIR adherence, they necessarily increase their ability to understand impact.

PID-based citation metrics can be used to support a data repository’s operational management decisions, e.g. to indicate which datasets are getting less attention, and thus could be candidates for lower-priced storage and access services. These metrics are complementary to other measures of data use, such as repository page views and download counts. They will likely show the same trends (e.g. data with more downloads will likely get more citations), but differences between access and citation metrics may also indicate 1) usability challenges where people download data but can’t use them successfully, or 2) different audiences where particular datasets are used more for research while others are used more educational settings (or other non-research focused contexts). PID-based citations can also be more easily added to contributor CVs and other online services such as ORCID profiles.