This document introduces the Illinois Research Connections Portal, a new database created to promote collaboration and showcase research at the University of Illinois. The portal allows users to search over 1,800 faculty profiles populated with publication information from Scopus. It aims to connect researchers with potential collaborators both on and off campus. Challenges include gaps in subject coverage and including all researchers. Over time, the portal will expand coverage, improve author disambiguation, and integrate with other campus systems.

1. Using the Illinois Research Connections Portal for
Collaboration & Discovery
Rebecca Bryant, PhD rabryant@illinois.edu
https://experts.illinois.edu

2. Where do you go to find information
about Illinois expertise?
• Campus web site?
• Departmental web site?
• Individual web site?
• Google Scholar?
• How do you find information across the Illinois
campus?
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3. Project goals
• Goal 1 of the University of Illinois Strategic Plan
proposes the development of a faculty profile-
sharing database in order to promote scholarship,
discovery & innovation.
• This system will:
– Connect researchers with potential collaborators
– Showcase Illinois research to external stakeholders
– Automate publication data collection from reliable
source(s)
– This project is NOT intended to support activity
reporting and assessment
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4. A few use cases
• Faculty, researchers, & staff
– Identify a potential collaborator with niche expertise—on- or off-
campus
– Identify potential reviewers with needed expertise—for grant,
fellowship, P&T, and much more
• Grad students/postdocs/undergrads:
– Identify advisors, mentors, and committee members
• External
– Media outlets looking for experts to interview on current events
topics
– General public, BOT, legislators, & potential corporate partners:
view the breadth, depth, and significant of campus research in one
central place.

5. Project highlights
• Collaborative OVCR/Library initiative
• Comprehensive
– Up to 2,500 faculty & researcher profiles
– Inclusion of all HR appointments for each included
researcher
• Interdisciplinary
– Will include all disciplines, academic colleges and
departments at Illinois
– It will also include research-oriented centers and institutes
• Project oversight from faculty governance committee
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6. IRC BETA
• Launched December 2015
• Initially includes 1,800 researchers
– Tenure-line faculty from STEM & SS disciplines
– Researchers in OVCR institutes
• Includes Scopus-identified publications only
– Pre-populates profiles with publication information in
Scopus publications index
– Automatic weekly updates from Scopus data
– Automatic creation of FingerprintTM concepts
• Arts & humanities profiles not yet visible
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7. Challenges & Opportunities
• Scopus index is comprehensive, but it has some subject
area weaknesses, particularly in HSS
• University Library is working to scrape OCLC WorldCat publications
data to capture monographs & book chapters
• Phased roll-out
• Currently: AY2016 TT faculty only—no clinical faculty and only
OVCR AP’s
• No arts & humanities faculty with publicly available profiles
• Difficult to capture NTT researchers
• Users, proxies, & unit-assigned administrators can edit &
enhance profiles
• Online resources/FAQs for users http://go.illinois.edu/IRC
• Future training sessions for unit administrators & librarians
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8. Can Users and Units Manage Profile
Content?
• Users may:
– Add/import publications
– Change display name
– Add profile enhancements like a photo or other CV information
– Add additional info to support better publications capture: ORCID
iD, alternate names, Scopus ID & ResearcherID, etc.
– Delegate a proxy to edit their profile for them
– Instructions at http://go.illinois.edu/irc
• Units may:
– Unit XOs can assign one or more unit administrators to maintain
publications information within their unit(s)
– Online resources available at http://go.illinois.edu/irc
– In-person workshop and video training in development
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9. Longer-term Opportunities
• Expanding coverage
– Added 3,500 monographs & book chapters from OCLC
WorldCat to enhance humanities/social science coverage
– Campus information: grants, patents
– Unit/individual enhancement of records
– Improve author disambiguation through integration with
ORCID
• Interoperability
– How can other campus systems ingest this
automatically-updated information?
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10. DEMO

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12. Using the Illinois Research Connections Portal for
Collaboration & Discovery
Rebecca Bryant, PhD rabryant@illinois.edu
https://experts.illinois.edu