An analytical tool that helps identify experts in any area of life sciences.  One of the most important aspects of expert identification is that there is no one-size-fits all definition of an expert. Thus, its interactive and intuitive interface assists users in ranking the experts and viewing the expert's overall profile all in one interface.

SEARCH

• All Fields: The 'All Fields' search queries the MEDLINE publications (Title, Abstract, Keywords, Author, Author Country and Author Affiliation fields), NIH Projects (ID, Title and Abstract fields), selected Conferences (ID, Title and Abstract fields), US Patents (ID, Title and Abstract fields) and Clinical Trials (Title, Detailed description, Conditions, Intervention and Principal Investigator fields).  This search behavior is designed for broad coverage without sacrificing the relevance of results.  

• Condition: This entity specific search field queries the MEDLINE (Title, Abstract and MeSH headings, Keywords, Chemical list fields), NIH Projects (Title and Abstract fields), selected Conferences (Title and Abstract fields), US Patents (Title and Abstract fields) and Clinical Trials (Condition and Title fields).  Condition refers to a disease, disorder, syndrome, health risk, life span, quality of life, illness, or injuries.

• Intervention: This entity specific search field queries the MEDLINE (Title, Abstract and Chemical list fields), NIH Projects (Title and Abstract fields), selected Conferences (Title and Abstract fields), US Patents (Title and Abstract fields) and Clinical Trials (Condition and Title fields). Intervention refers to drugs, biologics, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc. that is the focus a clinical study.

• Name: This entity specific search field queries the Author field of  MEDLINE and Conferences; Principal Investigator field of NIH Projects and Clinical Trials; and Inventor field of Patents data.

• Include Synonyms: A synonym term could be a word/phrase that means similar to its preferred term. When 'Include synonyms' (the default) is selected the synonym expansion behavior from thesaurus gets activated. The system will process the search term against all its synonyms from its respective thesaurus and displays the preferred term in the application. Deselection of the 'Include Synonyms' option will query only the search term and display its preferred term in the application.

Entity specific searches for Condition, Intervention and Name fields include auto-suggest option via a drop-down list to assist users in making term selection. Please note that the drop-down list includes only those terms that are present in the current data sources. A synonym term will include its preferred term in parenthesis in the drop-down list. As an example, Velcade will appear as Velcade (Bortezomib) in the drop-down list.

RESULTS

Results for search query are summarized in a table panel and chart panels.

The charts are a summary view of the search results and contain a selection of interactive charts.

• Country: The 'Country' chart displays a visual world heat map based on the number of experts in each country retrieved for the search query. The heat map display is based on logarithmic scale. This map flips to a bar chart of the same data.

  • Top Affiliations: The 'Top Affiliations' panel displays bar chart of the top ten organizations that the experts are affiliated with. This bar chart flips to Top Journals chart.

  • Top Journals: The 'Top Journal' panel displays bar chart of journals with the most query-relevant documents published in MEDLINE journals.

All the above described panels have interactive filtering capability.  Thus charts allow users to further explore and refine the query by selection of data values from these panels.  Multiple values can be selected by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on the data values within the charts.  Selected data values appear as breadcrumbs and can be individually removed from the breadcrumb panel.

The table panel displays the query results in a tabular format.

• Experts: The 'Experts' panel displays the first 500 authors with the highest document count. The default columns displayed are: Name, Affiliation, Location, Sunshine Act Data flag, Total documents, MEDLINE Publications, Clinical Trials, US Patents, and Research Projects.  It is possible to select, remove and reorder the columns by selecting the 'Columns' menu at the top right corner. Once selection of the columns is done, click Accept to refresh the view. Columns can be sorted by clicking on the column titles.  The expert name is an active link to the Expert Profile page.

Expert Profile

Click on an expert’s name to open the Expert Profile page.  The Expert Profile page provides detailed information for the selected expert, under different tabs in the following panels:

• • Search Criteria: The query term or phrase along with the query parameters (default and selected) is displayed in this panel.

  • Expert Profile: Information shown in this panel includes affiliation, country, email (when available), and total counts of publications, projects, US patents, clinical trials and conference proceedings, where counts in parenthesis indicate query relevant documents. System also displays committee level information if the expert has served on any FDA committees.

  • Co-Author Details: Co-authors are associated with the selected expert through publications, projects, US patents, clinical trials, or conference proceedings. The panel list is limited to the top 10 co-authors and the number of documents.  The co-authors' names in this panel are active links to their profile pages.

  • Co-Author Affiliations: This panel can be viewed by flipping Co-Author Details panel. It lists the affiliations of co-authors with number of documents.

  • Top Journals: The panel displays top ten journals retrieved based on the number of MEDLINE articles published in these journals, by the expert.

  • Relevant MEDLINE Publications: The panel displays a bar chart of query relevant MEDLINE publications of the expert over the last 10 years. A flip view of this panel displays a chart of other MEDLINE publications by this expert.

  • Relevant Keywords: This panel displays the keywords extracted from the expert’s MEDLINE publications that are query relevant. This panel flips to show keywords from the expert's other publications.

  • Similar Experts: This panel, in the next tab, shows a list of similarity factors and a list of top ten most similar experts computed by the system based on the following factors:

    • The four most descriptive keywords from the expert’s MEDLINE publications

    • The top two journals where the expert has published

    • The country of the expert

    • The top two co-authors who have published the most number of documents with the expert

    • The expert's affiliation

Please note that these factors are included only if available (e.g., if country level information is not available then system will exclude the country factor. The user has an option to deselect any of these factors to recompute similar experts. The system currently displays up to ten most similar experts based on selected filters.

• • Relevant Documents: Under the Documents tab, this panel lists all the "query-relevant documents" (MEDLINE publications, research projects, US patents, and clinical trials) the system has retrieved based on the search query. These documents are again arranged under different tabs - All, MEDLINE publications, Research projects, US Patents and Clinical Trials. An icon ($) is shown next to the document link when full text article links are available from a paid subscription source.

  • Other Documents: This panel lists other documents (not query-relevant) for the expert. These documents are arranged under different tabs as in Relevant Documents panel.

  • Network: The Network panel, shown in the following tab, displays the co-author network of the expert using a radial graph and a country heat map based on all co-author locations. By default, the co-author network displays the top 10 co-authors. The user can adjust the sliding scale at bottom left to select minimum common publications of co-authors to expand/shrink the network graph. The thickness of the line is proportional to the number of co-publications. The user has the ability to click on any co-author to see their co-author network and country map.  The user can zoom in and out of the graph anytime as well as reset the graph to the original expert by clicking on the expert's name in Selected Author Details at top left.

Exporting Data

Users have the ability to export results to conduct further analysis.

• Experts: The export includes information for each expert's publications and/or other selected data sources.  Clicking on the columns icon at the top right of the Experts panel displays a list of columns available. The user can select and reorder the fields to be exported. Click on the export button at the top right of the page to export data to an Excel workbook.

The first tab of the workbook, titled Expert Search Criteria, contains the search criteria used to generate the results set as well as the date and time the search was performed.

The second tab, titled Expert Search Results, contains the following fields:

• • Name (Last, First): This field specifies the author's name as Last, First and Middle.

    • Full Name: This field specifies the author's name as First, Middle and Last

  • Affiliation: This field specifies the author's affiliation.

    • Location: This field specifies the author's location.

  • Email: This field specifies the author's email.

  • Total: This field specifies the total relevant document counts when the user selects multiple data set filters under the content section.  

  • MEDLINE:  This field specifies the relevant publication count.  This field is included if the user selects the MEDLINE filter under the content section.

  • Clinical Trials: This field specifies the relevant clinical trials count. The field is included if the user selects the clinical trials filter under content section.

  • Research Projects: This field specifies the relevant Project count.  This field is included if the user selects the NIH Projects filter under content section.

  • US Patents: This field specifies the relevant patent count. The field is included if the user selects the patents filter under content section.

  • Conference Proceedings: This field specifies the relevant publication count.  This field is included if the user selects selected conferences filter under content section.

• Expert Profile: The export includes expert details information at the document level. The workbook contains the information under following tabs:

  •  Expert Search Criteria, contains the search criteria that were used to generate the results set as well as the date and time the search was performed.

  • Selected Author Details

  • Co-Authors

  • Co-Authors Affiliations

  • Top Journals

  • Query-Relevant MEDLINE Publications

  • Other Query-Relevant Publication

  • Most Descriptive Query Relevant

  • Other Query Relevant Keywords

  • All-Query Relevant Documents

  • Publications Query Relevant

  • Research Projects (Grants) Query Relevant

  • Conference Query Relevant

  • US Patents Query Relevant

  • Clinical Trials Query Relevant

  • Other All Query Relevant

  • Other Publications Query Relevant

  • Other Research Projects Query Relevant

  • Other Conference Query Relevant

  • Other US Patents Query Relevant

  • Other Clinical Trials Query Relevant

We are currently working on improving the author disambiguation algorithm.