Frequently Asked Questions
How do I contact you?
Who is listed in Harvard Catalyst Profiles?
Harvard Catalyst Profiles includes all faculty from Harvard Medical School, Harvard
School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard School of Public Health. Listings in Harvard
Catalyst Profiles are automatic and based on maintaining an active faculty appointment;
removal occurs only upon termination or retirement from the faculty appointment.
Who can view Harvard Catalyst Profiles?
This website is open to the general public. However, people with an HMS eCommons
account or relevant HUID privileges can login for additional features, such as active
networking, which is described above.
How do I edit my profile?
To edit your profile, click the Edit My Profile link on the sidebar. You might be
prompted to login with your HMS eCommons or Harvard PIN account. The Edit Menu page
lists all the types of content that can be included on your profile. They are grouped
into categories and listed in the same order as they appear when viewing your profile.
Click any content type to view/edit the items or change the privacy settings. Some
types of content are imported automatically from other systems, and you cannot edit
them through Profiles. They appear with a "locked" icon and contain more information
when you click them.
Your affiliation, title, mailing address, email address come from your Human Resources record.
If you have questions about your Human Resources record, please contact:
To view your profile as others see it, click the View My Profile link on the sidebar.
What are the sources of data for this website?
All data shown by default on this website are currently available on other public
websites. Directory information was obtained from the University's PeopleSoft system,
which feeds the HMS Whitepages and central Harvard Directory, and publications and
keywords were copied from PubMed. If faculty had previously entered publications
into FIRST, then a one-time copy of those publications were also added to this website.
If faculty had previously entered awards and narratives into FIRST, then one-time
copies of that information were also added to this website's database. However,
this information is only displayed on the website if those faculty members have
approved its inclusion. Default photos are from Harvard IDs, but faculty must also
approve the use of those before they are shown on this website. Lists of co-authors
and similar people are derived automatically from publications, and the department
and neighbor lists are determined automatically from directory information.
Why are there missing or incorrect publications in my profile?
Publications are added both automatically from PubMed and manually by faculty themselves.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to match articles in PubMed to the profiles
on this website. The algorithm used to find articles from PubMed attempts to minimize
the number of publications incorrectly added to a profile; however, this method
results in some missing publications. Faculty with common names or whose articles
were written at other institutions are most likely to have incomplete publication
lists. We encourage all faculty to login to the website and add any missing publications
or remove incorrect ones.
Contact us with additional questions regarding publications.
How frequently are the data on this website updated?
Directory information, such as names, titles, affiliations, and contact information
is automatically updated nightly from changes made in the University's PeopleSoft
system. Passive networks, such as keywords and similar people, are automatically
updated nightly. Publication data that is automatically derived from PubMed is updated
approximately every two weeks. Faculty can edit portions of their profiles at any
time.
Can I edit my concepts, co-authors, or list of similar people?
These are derived automatically from the PubMed articles listed with your profile.
You cannot edit these directly, but you can improve these lists by keeping your
publications up to date. Please note that it takes up to 24 hours for the system
to update your concepts, co-authors, and similar people after you have modified
your publications. Concept rankings and similar people lists are based on algorithms
that weigh multiple factors, such as how many publications you have in a subject
area compared to the total number of faculty who have published in that area. Your
feedback is essential to helping us refine these algorithms.
Faculty can also login and add custom concepts to their profiles, but these
are listed on the main part of the profile page, separate from the automatically derived terms.
Who created Harvard Catalyst Profiles?
Harvard Catalyst Profiles was invented by
Griffin M Weber, MD, PhD.
The current and past members of the development team include Nick Benik, Nick Brown, Paul Gomez,
Ken Huling, Shashank Jain, Melissa Kenny, Kevin Laitinen, Kellie Lucy, Krishna Nellutla,
James B. Norman, Rob Piscitello, George Rakauskas, Jeff Rosen, Franco Valentino,
Marlon Violette, Griffin Weber, and Steve Wimberg. This website would not have been
possible without the amazing work done over many years by Susan Vomacka (HMS Whitepages)
and Mortimer Litt, MD, (FIRST). We thank Joon Lee from the Center for Biomedical
Informatics (CBMI) at Harvard Medical School for his expertise and advice on working
with the Harvard bibliome.