Published in PNAS, 2025.
Biobanks—large repositories of biological samples and associated health data—are fundamental to modern biomedical research, yet their contributions are poorly captured by traditional metrics. In this work, we systematically traced over 2,600 biobanks across nearly 230,000 documents, including scientific publications, patents, clinical trials, grants, and policy reports, to map the full scope of their influence on science and public health.
We introduced the Biobank Impact Factor (BIF), a multidimensional metric that goes beyond citation counts to quantify a biobank’s reach. The BIF integrates factors such as the diversity of diseases studied, translational footprint, and intensity of collaborative use. Our analysis shows that biobanks offering open access to external researchers and maintaining rich, longitudinal datasets linked to medical records tend to have significantly greater scientific impact.
These findings, along with an open-access interactive dashboard, provide researchers and policymakers with a tool to evaluate and compare biobank contributions more effectively.