PROBLEM

Who Connects to Whom? A key requirement that had arisen in discussions with users was to find connections between researchers which could be used to identify potential partnerships or collaborative relationships. In work with users it was clear that there was a requirement to go beyond simple matches on the basis of common authorship of academic papers and similar connections and to find more oblique, even serendipitous connections.

CONTEXT

One of the Tools and Services to Support Communities. Related to Tools to Find Expertise. Although originally used to match people, the technique used was also applicable, for example, to match people to companies and companies to each other.

SOLUTION

Researcher Matching Tool (Online version)

The illustration shows the output from a tool to find connections between researchers at Coventry University, available at project-brain.org/connectapp/. Other features included the capability of adding external information – from companies and other universities, for instance. Current developments are aimed at allowing the system to scale to allow much larger sources of information covering many academic institutions and companies to be included. This requires techniques for ranking and filtering connections and these developments are an active and continuing area of work. Technical and other information about the development of this tool is provided in a publication of the project [Hensman et al, 2010].

DISCUSSION

In the example shown, the tool has also picked up a variety of other researchers and associated research areas outside the main field work of the researcher in question (which relates to wireless sensor networks and computer analysis of medical images).

In some cases the connections found are quite unexpected but nevertheless relevant. In the example shown, this  includes mathematicians through the analytical techniques used, specialists in visual representation through the visualisation techniques used, and specialists in different types of image analysis from disciplines as diverse as automotive engineering, metallurgy, and Geographical Information Systems. Particularly interesting, as in this example, is where connections which bridge the sciences and the arts can be made.

REFERENCES

Jim Hensman, Dimoklis Despotakis, Ajdin Brandic, Vania Dimitrova, Tools to Find Connections Between Researchers…, ECTEL 2010 Workshop Proceedings, http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-675/paper6.pdf