A Research Networking and Expertise Discovery Website
What is it?
Harvard Catalyst "Profiles" creates searchable and interactive online profiles of all faculty at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Harvard Catalyst is home to more than 24,000 faculty whose expertise covers nearly the entire breadth and depth of biomedicine. But in such a large community, how can you find collaborators to work with on your research?
This is where Profiles can help. Part directory and part social networking tool, Profiles not only lets you search for faculty by name or keyword, but it also helps you explore and understand the different ways that faculty work together.
This is done through interactive visualizations that reveal groups of faculty who research similar topics, coauthor scientific articles, work in the same organizations, or have offices that are physically close. Browse these visualizations to discover how you might already be connected to your next research collaborator!
Why should faculty use Profiles?
- Create a dynamic, engaging profile about your research.
- Connect with others via social media, web, and video tools.
- Showcase your work to potential students and funding agencies.
- Add new expertise to your team.
- Reveal new directions for your research.
- Include your Profiles URL in your NIH biosketch.
Why should everyone else use Profiles?
- Scientists can look for new collaborators.
- Students can identify potential mentors.
- Conference organizers can identify possible speakers.
- Administrators can assemble committees.
- Companies and organizations can build academic partnerships.
- The public can learn about biomedical research at Harvard.
Profiles, Networks, and Connections
As you navigate through the website, you will see three types of pages:
- Profile Pages -
Each person has a Profile Page that includes his or her name, contact information, publications and more.
Faculty can edit their own profiles, adding awards, a photo, and other types of content. Click the green Explore
buttons on a person's profile to view interactive visualizations of their networks.
- Network Pages -
Network Pages show the many ways that faculty are connected to each other,
such as by being coauthors or researching similar topics. Click the tabs on a Network Page to
explore different interactive visualizations, such as timelines or maps of the network.
- Connection Pages -
Certain Network Pages will include a "Why?" link. These will take you to a Connection
Page, which shows why two people that network are connected. For
example, the Why link in a co-authorship network lists the publications that two
people wrote together. The Connection Pages also reveal why certain people appear
higher on search results and why particular concepts are highlighted on a person's
profile.
Visualizations
Harvard Catalyst Profiles includes several different ways to view networks, including
(from left to right) Concept Clouds, which highlight a person's areas of research;
Map Views, which show where a person's co-authors are located;
Publication Timelines, which graph the number of publications of different types by year;
Radial Network Views, which illustrate clusters of connectivity among related people;
and Concept Timelines, which depict how a person's research focus has changed over time.
Access these visualizations by clicking the green Explore
buttons on profile pages.
Sharing Data
Harvard Catalyst Profiles is a Semantic Web application, which means its content
can be read and understood by other computer programs. This enables the data in
profiles, such as addresses and publications, to be shared with other institutions
and appear on other websites. If you select "Export This Page as RDF" from the "Use Our Data" menu
when viewing a profile page, you can see what computer programs see when visiting a profile.
For technical information about how to build a computer program that can export data
from Harvard Catalyst Profiles, view the
Use Our Data page.
Harvard Catalyst Profiles is powered by the free, open source Profiles Research
Networking Software. View the
Open Source Software page for more
information.