MDC umbrella

Make Data Count is a global, community-led initiative focused on the development of open research data assessment metrics. The principles of our social and technical infrastructure are rooted in transparency and accessibility. 

We believe that the development of open data metrics will require broad adoption and our best path towards that is global community involvement throughout each phase of work. Through the development of standards, centralized and transparent infrastructure, and reproducible bibliometrics research, we aim towards a state where researchers and the research supporting communities can use properly identified indicators of data re-use for research data investment ROI assessment and to aid in an reward system for open sharing. It is essential that these metrics are flexible, adjusting with research as the scientific landscape evolves, and that these openly reproducible metrics are broadly accepted by researchers. 

Driven by project partners at California Digital Library, Crossref, DataCite, DataONE, ScholCommLab, University of Ottawa, and ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, our goals are to produce evidence based studies on researcher behavior in citing and using data, as well as drive a community of practice around open, normalized data usage and data citation as initial steps towards the development of research data assessment metrics.

Open data metrics milestones

We are a team of:

Researchers & Bibliometricians

  • Stefanie Haustein (University of Ottawa)
  • Isabella Peters  (ZBW)
  • Anton Ninkov (University of Ottawa)
  • Kathleen Gregory (University of Ottawa)

Infrastructure Providers and Community Advocates

  • Amber Budden (DataONE)
  • Dave Vieglais (DataONE)
  • Daniella Lowenberg (California Digital Library)
  • John Chodacki (California Digital Library)
  • Kristian Garza (DataCite)
  • Martin Fenner (DataCite)
  • Matt Buys (DataCite)
  • Matt Jones (DataONE)
  • Rachael Lammey (Crossref)

We are informed by a team of Advisors:

  • Phil Bourne, Director of the Data Science Institute, University of Virginia
  • Rodrigo Costas, Senior Researcher, Centre for Science and Technology Studies
  • Josh Greenberg, Program Director (Digital Information Technology), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  • Heather Joseph, Executive Director, SPARC
  • Jennifer Lin, Product Director of Meta, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
  • Jo McEntyre, Team Leader (Literature Services), EMBL-EBI
  • Mark Parsons, Senior Research Scientist, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • Carly Strasser, Open Science Program Manager, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative

We are funded by:

  • National Science Foundation Eager Award 2014-2015
  • Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation 2016
  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award 2017-2019
  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award 2020-2022