I would like to know what are the most used software & resources in bioinformatics of this year? Is there some sort of ranking of what areas bioinformatics tools are being used and possibly the number of users?
I don't know what you're going to do with these numbers but keep in mind that they are not easy to interpret.
The most used resource or software may not be the most up-to-date or the best for the task. Also, older resources have an advantage over newer ones and a tool with few users may nonetheless be essential to a small community.
Another issue is that some tools use a GUI, some use command line, some are web based, some are installed using pip, some using apt-get, some are just downloaded as a binary,... all spread out over a myriad of repositories and providers. There is no unified way to quantify usage here.
I doubt there is any reliable ranking available for that. You could look at one or more of the following or combinations there of:
Tool repo download stats (caveats: there is no guarantee that a tool is being used after it was downloaded, users may be using a centrally installed copy etc)
Use some natural language processing tools to find citations in papers (again not 100% reliable)
Look for activity on software support forums/listservs to gauge overall activity that should be indicative of interest
Look for number of posts with tags (e.g. DESeq2) on a forum like Biostars.
I think you can go through OMICTOOLS website and may find relevant information you are seeking regarding bioinformatics tools. There provide catalogue of tools/softwares used for various types of data analysis.
OMICSTOOLS would have been my suggestion too. It’s the most complete collection of such software that I’m aware of (though not perfect). I don’t know if they collect download metrics etc, but you might be able to contact the site maintainers to get a data dump.
In addition to the other suggestions here, you might want to look at things like Altmetric. Measurements like Twitter activity, for example, might be more representative than a citation count in terms of active users.
I don't know what you're going to do with these numbers but keep in mind that they are not easy to interpret. The most used resource or software may not be the most up-to-date or the best for the task. Also, older resources have an advantage over newer ones and a tool with few users may nonetheless be essential to a small community.
Another issue is that some tools use a GUI, some use command line, some are web based, some are installed using pip, some using apt-get, some are just downloaded as a binary,... all spread out over a myriad of repositories and providers. There is no unified way to quantify usage here.