title: A survey of the availability of primary bioinformatics web resources.
abstract: The explosive growth of the bioinformatics field has led to a large amount of data and software applications publicly available as web resources. However, the lack of persistence of web references is a barrier to a comprehensive shared access. We conducted a study of the current availability and other features of primary bioinformatics web resources (such as software tools and databases). The majority (95%) of the examined bioinformatics web resources were found running on UNIX/Linux operating systems, and the most widely used web server was found to be Apache (or Apache-related products). Of the overall 1,130 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) examined, 91% were highly available (more than 90% of the time), while only 4% showed low accessibility (less than 50% of the time) during the survey. Furthermore, the most common URL failure modes are presented and analyzed.
authors.affiliation: Biomedical Informatics Unit, Foundation for Biomedical Research of the Academy of Athens, 11527 Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Trias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Thireou
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Spyrou
authors.forename: Vassilis
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Atlamazoglou
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003625:Data Collection; D016208:Databases, Factual; D020407:Internet; D012984:Software; D013997:Time Factors