The role of a bioresource research impact factor as an incentive to share human bioresources.

摘要

Numerous health research funding institutions have recently expressed their strong will to promote data sharing (http://www. wellcome.ac.uk/publichealthdata). As underlined in a recent editorial in Nature Medicine, an operational approach is needed to achieve this goal . Bioresources such as biobanks, databases and bioinformatics tools are important elements in this landscape. Bioresources need to be easily accessible to facilitate advancement of research. Besides technical and ethical aspects, a major obstacle for sharing them is the absence of recognition of the effort behind establishing and maintaining such resources. The main objective of proposing a Bioresource Research Impact Factor (BRIF) is to promote the sharing of bioresources by creating a link between their initiators or implementers and the impact of the scientific research using them . A BRIF would make it possible to trace the quantitative use of a bioresource, the kind of research using it and the efforts of the people and institutions that construct it and make it available.