Findability dilemma and providing answers and solutions

Jean Bedord's summary of KM World & Intranets 2007 Conference hits few important points. She highlights the value that semantic web and faceted search bring to improving user experience and findability.

"Increasingly, behavioral and linguistic aspects are being recognized as essential factors in the process of adding value to the organization. Search is not easy, and delivering answers to people is not straightforward." [bolding is mine]

When we search, we are all looking for answers and solutions, and we are not there yet....

As Bill Gates said in 2005 ""People are very impressed at what search is today but it's really quite poor compared to what it should be"

2Collab: Just did it

The young turks in Amsterdam just did it beautifully.... 2Collab is live

"This is a new collaboration tool designed specifically for professional researchers – so those people who spend most of their time banging their heads against a brick wall and trying to find those vital bits of information! The history of science is based on working together - It’s all about sharing and learning. And this is what 2collab is all about." via 2Collab Blog

Here is Richard Ackerman's review and Deepak's post on 2collab

Semantic Web and RDF in action at Talis

Talis project makes it easy to see how RDF triplets can improve information discovery. Here is another of their application via Ian Davis
STM publishers need to develop similar semantic web expertise that we see in Talis.

SCImago: a new portal ranking journals and countries

"The SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators could be used to assess and analyze scientific domains.

This platform takes its name from the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicatorpdf, developed by SCImago from the widely known algorithm Google PageRank™. This indicator shows the visibility of the journals contained in the Scopus® database from 1996. " via SCImago

Nice charts by Antanas Marcelionis' AmCharts

Fun with Dumpr and the kids

Created with dumpr.net,

Rubik's Cube Generator



Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos



Get your own sketch

Social Graph or Social Network?

It's all semantics. Now that Tim Berners-Lee, is commenting on this new hype, let's keep it simple. If I tell to my friends that they are in my "social graph" they would not get what I am talking. But if I say that they are in my social "network", they would understand that easily. So for time being I would stick using the "network" and FOAF for simplicity.

Being part of the worst

I used to work for Bolt one of the companies listed in the 20 worst venture investments
2001 was definitely different time period but Bolt was the Facebook or MySpace of that period, and when no one was tagging anything we had Bolt users tagging their friends.....
We did really crazy stuff, but hey it was a crazy period too.

Companionship is good:Thomson's new WebPlus web search engine

Thomson launched a new slick web search product to be a "companion to ISI Web of Knowledge".
This reminds me another "companionship" that we have in Scopus with Scirus.
The product is powered by Microsoft Live and uses Vivisimo clustering technologies. There are few interesting feature in WebPlus, but I think that's it. Nothing new. This is still in beta, you never know, may be there is something which is still in the works that will really differentiate this product in the market. May be something that they can leverage using Microsoft STC in China. It seems that they are using webplus with WestLaw too

SciTechNet

A new blog by Gerry McKiernan who is an Associate Professor at Iowa State University covering "online social networking services in the Sciences and Technology".

Also if you are interested in Peer review research blogs follow bpr3 blog and this logo

Bibliometrics and research quality measurement

Anyone who is involved with impact factor, peer review, citation searching etc should peruse this report from Universities UK. Here is Guardian's brief on this.

Here are some highlighted points from the report:

• "Bibliometrics are probably the most useful of a number of variables that could feasibly be used to measure research performance.
• There is evidence that bibliometric indices do correlate with other, quasi-independent measures of research quality - such as RAE grades - across a range of fields in science and engineering.
• There is a range of bibliometric variables as possible quality indicators. There are strong arguments against the use of (i) output volume (ii) citation volume (iii) journal impact and (iv) frequency of uncited papers.
• 'Citations per paper' is a widely accepted index in international evaluation. Highly-cited papers are recognised as identifying exceptional research activity.
• Accuracy and appropriateness of citation counts are a critical factor.
• There are differences in citation behaviour among STEM and non-STEM as well as different subject disciplines.
• Metrics do not take into account contextual information about individuals, which may be relevant. They also do not always take into account research from across a number of disciplines.
• The definition of the broad subject groups and the assignment of staff and activity to them will need careful consideration.
• Bibliometric indicators will need to be linked to other metrics on research funding and on research postgraduate training.
• There are potential behavioural effects of using bibliometrics which may not be picked up for some years
• There are data limitations where researchers' outputs are not comprehensively catalogued in bibliometrics databases." via Universities UK
  

Katz delivers again

Hats off to my colleague Peter (and his wife)Claudia) running and finishing NY City Marathon. Who knows may be next year the whole corporate sales team will be running the NYC marathon.

"Where there's a will, there's a way"

STM publishers and Online Ad Spending

US online advertising spending is projected to be $42B in 2011. This can be an opportunity to explore "different pricing models" in accessing to fee based content. OncologyStat is a good example of this. Who knows may be our customers would not mind to see ads similar to what Newsweek is doing when they use our products as long as the ads are relevant, not intrusive and the institutions were getting a share of the ad revenues.

MDConsult on Twitter

I jokingly say that you should not follow me on twitter, but if you are an MD, follow the latest in medical news through Twitter MDConsult which is published by my colleague Jeff Lash

Wild ducks needed for innovation

In a Newsweek interview Intel's former CEO Andy Grove calls for a "cultural revolution in research community" and hits on pharma industry's inefficiency and peer review system.

"The peer review system in grant making and in academic advancement has the major disadvantage of creating conformity of thoughts and values. It's a modern equivalent of a Middle Ages guild, where you have to sing a particular way to get grants, promotions and tenure. The pressure to conform [to prevailing ideas of what causes diseases and how best to find treatments for them] means you lose the people who want to get up and go in a different direction. There is no place for the wild ducks. The result is more sameness and less innovation. What we need is a cultural revolution in the research community, academic and non-academic. We need to give wild ducks the opportunity to emerge and quack their way to success. But cultural change can be driven only by action at the top." via Newsweek

This comment from Andy Grove reminded me of The Matthew Effect which Nassim Nicholas Taleb highlights in Black Swan:

"Academic success is partly (but significantly) a lottery.

Now, that brings a completely different perspective to the whole citations searches and impact factor business.....

Socialize Openly

Some hype and questions about Google's Open Social. Will be interesting to see if Nature Network will join this initiative? or will there be a new comer who will suck all the profile information from these social networks and create a new scientific network?

British Telecom's report on the future of Pharma industry

This report is a great read for anyone who is involved in developing products in pharma and healthcare markets. via bbgm

"If Boeing developed aircraft the way the pharmaceutical industry develops drugs, they would develop 10 very different aircraft, fly them, and the one that stayed in the air would be the one they would sell." Tom Peterson, Chief Scientific Officer, Enteleos, Inc

Scopus content powering QS World University Ranking

As I mentioned to my colleague Thijs Willems couple days ago, Scopus team has been doing a great job in improving the product. I believe that right now they are leading in terms of product feature and functionality compared to Web of Science. This competition is good for the market. It's good to see that QS Education Trust is using Scopus data to create the World University ranking.