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Interview
Social networking has huge
potential for science
Earlier this year Collexis launched its first social
is unique to life sciences and medicine and is
in the public domain. We use metadata from
networking site, BiomedExperts.com. The
PubMed to index the data. We also create
profiles of each abstract using our own text
company’s chief operating officer, Steve Leicht,
mining tools.
This all means that we have a pretty good
tells us how such sites can help research
estimation of the experts before they sign
up. From this starting point, users register
How is social networking used in and can add all that you’d normally see in
research? social networking. We currently have more
There has not been much research on this. than 48,000 registered users and more than
So far, professional uses of social networking 10,000 new registered users are added each
have focused mainly on recruitment or month. We also have a large number of
just general networking. However, its people who visit the site to see the experts –
potential in the research community around 30,000 visits each day.
is much more enlightening. It enables The site enables text mining and author
people to work with and talk to others in disambiguation. We also have a number
their fields and to go beyond geographical of intelligent filters so users can see, for
and institutional boundaries. This offers a example, information about other experts
unique opportunity. in their fields displayed geographically.
scientific researchers but we were the first to
How did Collexis get into this pre-populate it with experts. What is your business approach?
area? We put this site out for free. We honestly
Collexis was formed in the 1990s out of a What are the benefits of pre- believe in the power of connecting
university research project. A professor at populating it? researchers in their community. However,
Leiden University in the Netherlands who From the start, in addition to having an this does also feed our commercial tools that
was an expert in malaria noticed how often extensive database of experts, we could also we build for clients. We are now setting up
he was being faxed requests for information include social networks based on the people social networks for publishers or societies
and had to fax that information back all over that a particular expert has co-authored that want to provide benefits for their
the world. The project looked at whether papers with – and who those people have members or author community.
the web could instead be used to connect co-authored papers with too. This means In February 2008 we bought Lawriter, a
experts in medical research. The result was that right from the start there was useful provider of legal information for bar students
one of the first coordinated attempts at information to help people, for example, to and attorneys. Since then we have launched
creating an international network of experts search for potential collaborators. CasemakerX.com, a social networking site
and information to improve global health Another thing that is sometimes missed for law students. We will also do more in
and the technology was commercialised in in discussions is that there is a portion of biomedicine and there will be sites in other
1999. any community that is not going to do social areas of STM.
Our early products were around full-text networking. And the most senior people are I believe that the promise of networking will
identification of documents and experts. often the last people to fill in their profiles. come true. People are awash with information
As social networking started to explode it I think there is some additional intrinsic of varying degrees. The real value is in sifting
seemed logical to use these types of tools to value in pre-populating the site so that all through this. We believe that the long-term
connect experts too. these people are represented too. It gives need is in delivering usable information
Even general social networking sites completeness. at the time it is needed as well as providing
such MySpace and Facebook are well used points of collaboration. It’s a way to share and
by research communities. We launched Where did your data come from? communicate information around the world,
BiomedExperts.com in February 2008 and When the site was launched we had 1.5 to flatten the research world.
began marketing it in the April. We weren’t million profiles in biomedicine. This was all
the first to create a social networking site for from information on PubMed. That material Interview by Siân Harris
38 Research Information December 2008/January 2009 www.researchinformation.info
RIdec08 pp38-40 Interview.indd 38 17/11/08 17:01:37
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