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. 2019 May 21;20(3):1004-1010.
doi: 10.1093/bib/bbx159.

A snapshot of 3649 Web-based services published between 1994 and 2017 shows a decrease in availability after 2 years

Ágnes Ősz  1 , Lőrinc Sándor Pongor  1 , Danuta Szirmai  1 , Balázs Győrffy  1
Affiliations

A snapshot of 3649 Web-based services published between 1994 and 2017 shows a decrease in availability after 2 years

Ágnes Ősz et al. Brief Bioinform. .

Abstract

Background: The long-term availability of online Web services is of utmost importance to ensure reproducibility of analytical results. However, because of lack of maintenance following acceptance, many servers become unavailable after a short period of time. Our aim was to monitor the accessibility and the decay rate of published Web services as well as to determine the factors underlying trends changes.

Methods: We searched PubMed to identify publications containing Web server-related terms published between 1994 and 2017. Automatic and manual screening was used to check the status of each Web service. Kruskall-Wallis, Mann-Whitney and Chi-square tests were used to evaluate various parameters, including availability, accessibility, platform, origin of authors, citation, journal impact factor and publication year.

Results: We identified 3649 publications in 375 journals of which 2522 (69%) were currently active. Over 95% of sites were running in the first 2 years, but this rate dropped to 84% in the third year and gradually sank afterwards (P < 1e-16). The mean half-life of Web services is 10.39 years. Working Web services were published in journals with higher impact factors (P = 4.8e-04). Services published before the year 2000 received minimal attention. The citation of offline services was less than for those online (P = 0.022). The majority of Web services provide analytical tools, and the proportion of databases is slowly decreasing. Conclusions. Almost one-third of Web services published to date went out of service. We recommend continued support of Web-based services to increase the reproducibility of published results.

Keywords: Web servers; Web services; bioinformatics tools; citation analysis; databases; online.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Evaluation of Web services available in PubMed. Overview of the study protocol (A). Annual publications of new Web services from 1994 to 2016 show an average yearly increase of 30.8% (B). The proportion of published Web services based on the affiliation of the last author by continents (C), and by country (D).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Dynamic change through time. A remarkably high proportion (31%) of published Web services are already inactive. The distribution of Web services from 1994 until 2016 based on accessibility (A). The relative frequency of active Web services between 2008 and 2016. The arrows indicate the rates of the decrease in the proportion of active Web services (B). The relative proportion of active tools by journal (C).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Features of active Web tools. Most that require a registration offer a service (A). Distribution of the various type of Web tools (service, database, both types) by environment (online only, desktop only, both environments) on a logarithmic scale (B). The yearly distribution of active Web services by type shows an increased proportion of services (C). The yearly proportion of active Web services available online only does not show a significant trend (D). Sites with .com domain were more likely to work (E).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Impact of Web services shows significant differences based on accessibility. The mean citation rate of active Web tools is higher than for inactive tools (A). The mean impact factor of Web services by active status (B). The distribution of the mean impact factor by continent shows that Europe is first and Africa is last (C). The mean citation of Web services per year shows minimal attention to papers published before the year 2000 (D). The red lines show the 95% confidence interval in all graphs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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