Make Data Count: Driving metrics for the meaningful evaluation of data

In order to successfully evaluate the impact and reach of data, there is a need for metrics that treat data as primary research outputs. Make Data Count is an initiative that works to develop metrics that allow the community to understand how data are used and how they advance research and policy. Make Data Count collaborates with groups across the research data ecosystem to create and implement workflows for recording information about how data sets are accessed and used; those measures provide the necessary foundation for further contextualization leading into meaningful data metrics. Spanning across disciplines, sectors, and geographies, Make Data Count fosters innovation in data evaluation. We develop standards to capture comparable and consistent counts of data citations, downloads and views, and scalable infrastructure to collect, aggregate and share usage measures, openly and through integration with workflows to index research information. We support projects that build the research evidence needed to identify metadata gaps and to benchmark data metrics to respond to the needs of diverse users. And importantly, we believe that data must be incorporated into research evaluation processes such as funding applications or tenure and promotion processes so that researchers are rewarded for the data they share and their impact. We invite the community to contribute to the development of meaningful data metrics so that, through collaboration, we can create a system where data are regularly assessed, evaluated, and rewarded.