NIH announces winners of S-index Challenge to advance data sharing across biomedical research

NEI DIrector, Michael Chiang (left), Bhavesh Patel, Ph.D. (California Medical Innovations Institute), NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya.

In the 21^st century, biomedical science is increasingly based on "big data". The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is aiming to ensure that researchers who generate and share high-quality datasets receive recognition. The NIH Data Sharing Index, or S-index, is envisioned as a new metric that measures how effectively researchers make scientific data available for others to find, access, reuse, and build upon.

The NIH S-index Challenge, a $1million prize competition, invited innovators to develop and validate approaches for measuring the scientific impact of data sharing while also emphasizing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data practices and real-world research impact.

The scientific community has traditionally measured a researcher's impact by their publication record, often using the h-index, which reflects the productivity and influence of their scholarly work. While individual papers typically advance science incrementally, shared datasets can enable many future discoveries by supporting hypothesis generation and results validation. Inspired by the h-index, the S-index recognizes the scientific impact of creating and sharing high-quality datasets that serve as foundational resources for the research community.

"By rewarding high-quality data sharing, beyond simply data generation, the S-index aims to accelerate discovery and foster a culture in which data sharing and team science are recognized as meaningful scientific contributions," said Michael F. Chiang, M.D., director of the National Eye Institute, which led the challenge on behalf of NIH.

"Recognizing a new S-index metric is just the beginning and part of a broader NIH effort to strengthen rigor, reproducibility and transparency of science," Chiang said. The finalist teams developed innovative and complimentary approaches to measuring and rewarding high-quality data sharing, providing a foundation for the continued evolution of the S-index and future collaboration across the research community.

Beyond announcing the winners, the S-index Innovation Event convened leaders from academia, publishing, government, and the broader research community to discuss implementation strategies, adoption pathways, and the cultural changes needed to recognize data sharing as a core scholarly contribution.

Seven finalist teams advanced to a live judging session at NIH, where they presented and demonstrated their S-index models before a panel of senior NIH leaders. Final selections reflected the live presentations as well as evaluations conducted over the past several months by independent subject matter experts outside the federal government and a federal judging panel. The final winners were:

First Place ($400,000)

Project: A simple and field-aware S-index for promoting and rewarding data sharing in which the team developed Scholar Data (scholardata.io), a platform inspired by Google Scholar that measures the scientific impact of shared datasets.
Lead: Bhavesh Patel, Ph.D. (California Medical Innovations Institute)

Team: Aaron Lee, M.D. and Cecilia Lee, M.D., (Washington University St. Louis), Sanjay Soundarajan, Ph.D., James O'Neill, Ph.D., and Aydan Gasimova, Ph.D. (California Medical Innovations Institute)

Second Place ($300,000)

Project: The SHARE Index: a unified metric for recognizing exemplary data sharing behavior

Lead: Shuhan He, M.D. (Harvard Medical School; ConductScience)
Team: Yijian Henry He, Ph.D., Lawrence Jiang, Bifei Hao, Boyu Peng and Santosh Adhikari (ConductScience), Allison Goff, Ph.D., Shivani Pimparkar and Pedram Safari, Ph.D. (MGH Institute of Health Professions), Joshua Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D. (Harvard Medical School), Andrew Marshall, M.D. (Google), David Liebovitz, M.D. (Northwestern)

Third Place ($150,000)

Project: Engaging key stakeholder communities to promote data sharing and reuse, and to understand impact through a composite S-index
Lead: Griffin Weber, M.D., Ph.D. (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center).

Team: Katy Börner, Ph.D. (Indiana University), Amy Brand, Ph.D. (MIT), Kristi Holmes, Ph.D. (Northwestern), Daniel Hook, Ph.D. (Digital Science), John Inglis, Ph.D. (bioRxiv, medRxiv), Chonnettia Jones, Ph.D. (Addgene), Arjun Krishnan, Ph.D. (University of Colorado Anschutz), and Steinn Sigurdsson, Ph.D. (Penn State, arXiv).

Honorable Mention ($37,500)

Project: The S-Index: how many researchers has your data enabled?

Lead: Taom Sakal, Ph.D. (Great Ecology)

Team: Luke Sakal, (California State University, Chico)

NIH will continue working with stakeholders across the biomedical research community to explore opportunities for advancing the S-index and fostering a culture that recognizes and rewards high-quality data sharing.

To watch the NIH S-Index Innovation Event, go to the NIH Videocast