A framework for understanding an open scientific community using automated harvesting of public artifacts.

BACKGROUND: The Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) community has emerged as a leader in observational research on real-world clinical data for promoting evidence for healthcare and decision-making. The community has seen rapid growth in publications, citations, and the number of authors. Components of its successful uptake have been attributed to an open science and collaborative culture for research and development. Investigating the adoption of OHDSI as a field of study provides an opportunity to understand how communities embrace new ideas, onboard new members, and enhance their impact.

OBJECTIVE: To track, study, and evaluate an open scientific community's growth and impact.

METHOD: We present a modern architecture leveraging open application programming interfaces to capture publicly available data (PubMed, YouTube, and EHDEN) on open science activities (publication, teaching, and engagement).

RESULTS: Three interactive dashboard were implemented for each publicly available artifact (PubMed, YouTube, and EHDEN). Each dashboard provides longitudinal summary analysis and has a searchable table, which differs in the available features related to each public artifact.

CONCLUSION: We discuss the insights enabled by our approach to monitor the growth and impact of the OHDSI community by capturing artifacts of learning, teaching, and creation. We share the implications for different users based on their functional needs. As other scientific networks adopt open-source frameworks, our framework serves as a model for tracking the growth of their community, driving the perception of their development, engaging their members, and attaining higher impact.