Introduction
Profiles Research Networking Software is a research networking and expertise mining
software tool. It not only shows traditional directory information, but also illustrates
how each person is connected to others in the broad research community.
As you navigate through the website, you will see three types of pages:
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Profile Pages
Each person has a Profile Page that includes his or her name, titles, affiliations,
and contact information. Faculty can edit their own profiles, adding publications,
awards, narrative, and a photo. Other objects, such as publications, journals, departments,
or concepts can have "profiles". This About page is a "profile" of the Profiles
Research Networking Software website.
- Passive Networks - Passive networks are formed
automatically when faculty share common traits such as being in the same department,
working in the same building, co-authoring the same paper, or researching the same
concepts or topics. A preview of a person's passive networks is shown on the right
side of his or her profile.
- Active Networks - Active networks are the ones that you define. When users
who login to the website view other people's profiles, they can mark those people
as collaborators, advisors, or advisees. In other words, you can build your own
network of people that you know. Currently, you can only see the networks that you
build. In the future you will be able to share these lists with others. Active networks
are shown on your left sidebar.
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Network Pages
Network Pages show all the people in a particular Passive or Active Network. Networks
can also include other types of profiles, not just people. A "concept" network is
a list of all the topics a person has written about. There are many ways to display
a network other than a simple list, and Profiles offers several types of network
visualization tools.
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Connection Pages
Certain Network Pages will include a "Why?" link. These will take you to a Connection
Page, which shows why two people or profiles in 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
Profiles Research Networking Software 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.
Sharing Data
Profiles Research Networking Software 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 click the "Export RDF" link on
the left sidebar of a profile page, you can see what computer programs see when
visiting a profile. For technical information about how build a computer program
that can export data from Profiles Research Networking Software, view the
Sharing Data page.
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