BioMedExperts: a new release

BiomedExperts, now part of Elsevier,  has today 374,000 users.

BiomedExperts is a free online service for the life sciences community to connect, network, communicate and collaborate. It is the world’s first pre-populated scientific professional network for life science researchers.

BiomedExperts contains the research profiles of more than 1.8 million life science researchers, representing over 26 million connections from over 2,700 institutions in more than 160 countries. These profiles were generated from author and co-author information from 18 million publications published in over 20,000 journals!

For me, BME remains one of the best sources to locate medical experts…

http://www.biomedexperts.com/Portal.aspx 

 

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Science: social networks are overvalued

Arroyo, S.S.
Networks for information exchange among scientists and scholars in the context of Web 2.0 [Redes de intercambio de información científica y académica entre los profesionales en el contexto de la web 2.0]
(2010) ACIMED, 21 (3), article in Spanish. 

Abstract
Social networks for information exchange among scientists and scholars, designed to deepen their ties in the context of Web 2.0 is the issue addressed in this article. Some of the major sites designed especially for science and technology, such as Nature Network, CT Sci NeT, Biomed Expert and Research GATE are featured.

The article also shows important aspects to be considered during the process of communicating scientific results. It describes the relationship between information organizations, in all its forms, and networks of social exchange, in an attempt to be closer and more present where actual and potential users are.

 

It warns about organizations that may overvalue the benefits of many so-called latest technologies and their inclusion in other types of networks whose effectiveness remains to be demonstrated.

 

http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1024-94352010000300006&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en

 

Trends of the year 2010: Linked-In and BioMedExperts

2008 was the year of Enterprise 2.0.

2009 was the year of social networks.

2010 is the year of niche social networks: among them, Linked-in and Biomedexperts.

“By helping users keep their business lives separate from vacation plans, baby pictures, and videos of kittens, LinkedIn provides a valuable professional resource for its 75 million users”

“BiomedExperts, which was developed by Collexis, provides a good example of how such sites operate. With 300,000 active users and 1.8 million prepopulated profiles (which are generated based on 10 years of published research data), the site is focused entirely on researchers in the biomedical field. Users can track professional connections, co-authors, and published papers to facilitate collaboration“.

Schiller, Kurt. Five trends shaking up the Internet. Information Today, October 2010. Online:
http://www.infotoday.com/IT/oct10/Schiller.shtml

Your Experts directory with Collexis

Look at this very nice hompage, made with Collexis/BioMedExperts.

The Johns Hopkins University offers a wonderful promotion of their researchers.
http://www.researchprofiles.collexis.com/jhu/default.asp

Collexis Community:
http://www.researchprofiles.collexis.com/jhu/community.asp

Scopus’ data for Expert Profiling

Collexis (owned now by Elsevier) has announced that Scopus data will feed now their Expert profiling module.

“The Collexis Expert Profiling community module allows for the identification of an institution’s research experts based on their historical publications as well as research experts from other institutions who subscribe to the Collexis Expert Profiling application.

Additional features within the Collexis Expert Profiling application include the capability of finding similar experts, searching by key concept and provide the “Scientific Context”; that will display related experts, grants and publications based on the Fingerprint of an individual grant or publication.”

See the Press release

It is not mentioned if BioMedExperts is affected by this decision (surely Yes at term). BioMedExperts was previously made with PubMed data.

BioMedExperts reached 200,000 registered users

I missed that, last summer, BioMedExperts has surpassed the 200,000 registered user mark, which makes BME one of the most successful social network for Life Science.

But the success stays modest: there are 2 millions of authors referenced in PubMed and 5.5 millions of working scientists (includng engineers) were counted by the NSF in th US alone!

BiomedExperts allows scientists and researchers to directly connect with and explore their own professional contacts, grow their networks and identify researchers with the expertise needed for future collaborations. Through user-friendly search interfaces, potential research collaborators can share data and collaborate with professionals.

http://www.collexis.com/news/press081909.htm

Science 2.0: talking about or doing Science?!

There is no doubt that young scientists are attracted by social network: 56 % of early career researchers use social networking site personally but only 13% professionnaly.

But, despite numerous products on the place (at least 7 major sites only for Scientists), “none of these sites yet seems to have captured the interest of a significant proportion of the scientific community, although this could also be because researchers are unwilling to discuss their work openly. Research in progress is less likely to be publicly discussed, regardless of how useful input could be, for fear of having ideas and results stolen by other research teams“, concludes Sarah Hugget.

At the time being, it is clear that “Science Social Networking” is more a buzz-word than a real practice deeply adopted by Scientists over the world.

David Crotty explained, once again, how science 2.0 failed: “Nearly all of the more visible attempts so far have focused on talking about science, rather than tools for actually doing science.”

David Crotty makes a clear distinction between Science Communication (which is not the core business of Scientists) and the Science itself: “Communication is an important part of being a scientist. It is not, however, the top priority for most. (…) Even without new online technologies, scientists already spend a substantial portion of their time communicating. They share results with peers, plan future experiments with collaborators, give talks, write papers, teach, etc. New social media endeavors ask scientists to devote even more time to communication, but it’s unclear where participants are supposed to find that time“. (…)

“Scientists are no different than other humans. Most people don’t blog. It’s not something they’re interested in doing. Blogging tends to attract those with a strong interest in communication, writing, and teaching” (…)

Even counting 600 scientists on Twitter, “you’re still talking about a very small percentage of the tens of millions of working scientists in the world“.

Crotty, David.  Science and Web 2.0: Talking about Science Vs. Doing Science. Posted on Feb. 8, 2010: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2010/02/08/science-and-web-2-0-talking-about-science-versus-doing-science/

Hugget, Sarah. Social networking in academia. Research Trends, March 2010. Online: http://www.info.scopus.com/researchtrends/archive/RT16/re_tre_16.html?ut