ResearchScoreCard
By sylvie | December 10, 2009
I was looking for research papers on expertise and I just stumbled upon this interesting-looking website: ResearchScoreCard: Welcome to the Collaboratorium. It says on the main page: “ResearchScorecard is a tool for finding and evaluating biomedical scientists. Our goal: helping you find collaborators the way science is done — rationally.” I like that second tag line; it makes it sound like a dating site for scientists 
So basically, it’s a tool to help researchers find other scientists to collaborate with and they do this by letting people see with whom each researcher has collaborated with, what the scientist is working on and what type of funding the scientist is getting. There’s also something about the usage of “Life Sciences products”. I’m not sure how this would help you find a collaborator, but it probably makes complete sense if you’re in biomedicine (probably because if you’re using product X, you want to collaborate with other people who have experience with product X?). Or maybe it’s to help marketers find potential buyers. It’s kind of confusing.
So two questions pop to my mind:
- Is anyone actually using this?
- If so, how successful has it been at fostering scientific collaboration?
Oh wait, I have a third question: who is behind ResearchScoreCard? I hope they are scientists and that they are going to publish their results, because I am extremely curious about this.
And on a completely different note: AltSearchEngines, a blog about alternative search engines. Gonna Delicious that one up.
Update
Oh, I found another one: BiomedExperts. This one says it hit 80,000 registered users over the first year - though as we know, a registered user != a regular visitor. What is it about biomedicine that it requires social networks to get people to collaborate together? Now I’m curious to know if there are social networks for other types of scientists.
Topics: Social Software, Security, Collaboration |
December 11th, 2009 at 11:51
It makes me think to people working on human-provided service (http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/Staff/sd/papers/HPS-IEEE-IC.pdf)
Just describe the kind of services you can offer, and you can be integrated in the big SOA picture. Of course, it can be social, with a trust model, others can rank you.