A Tool for Scientific Provenance of Data and Software

For a scientist in the modern era, reliability of results is no longer the key to a successful career in research. Increasingly, scientists must demonstrate the applicability (e.g. usefulness) of their work, as well as ensure the research is accessible (e.g. easy to find and easy to interpret). It is these three traits that define how others perceive a body of scientific work. Analyzing citations, such as h-index, is a mature measure of applicability of publications, but measuring the applicability of software is lagging behind. In this paper, we discuss a potential tool for data and software provenance that can be used to measure data and software applicability through usage reporting and citations.