Husky SciVal Experts FAQs 1. What is SciVal? SciVal is a software tool that builds an expertise profile of an individual faculty member based on an aggregation of that faculty s publications, sponsored research and patents.. The profile generated is also known as a fingerprint. SciVal provides search features that allow one to identify faculty in an institution with particular areas of expertise based on the profile or fingerprint the tool has generated. Husky SciVal Experts was created specifically for University of Washington Faculty. Many other institutions, such as Johns Hopkins, University of Michigan, Oregon Health and Science University, also use this tool, and profiles of their faculty are available through links provided on the Husky SciVal Experts home page. 2. How does it work? SciVal constructs a faculty member s expertise profile using an algorithm that searches publications included in the SCOPUS Database of over 19,000 scientific journals. It utilizes 12 different thesauri from different disciplines to match key words in the thesauri with information in the publications. For example, it uses the MeSH headings in the National Library of Medicine for biomedical journals, COMPENDEX terms for Engineering fields, and the INSI/EDTE joint thesaurus for Plasma Physics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, Nuclear and High-energy Physics. A list of the nine thesauri used for key concept identification in various fields can be found at the end of this document. 3. What is it used for? The primary purpose of this tool is to help identify particular UW faculty with a particular type of expertise. For example, if you were interested in finding someone working with a particular type of technology, you could search using concept terms related to that technology. Using the full text search option, you could, for example, paste the abstract of a recent article of interest into the full text search field. SciVal creates a profile of key concept terms from the abstract, then matches it with UW faculty profiles to show you who is working in areas similar to that described in the abstract. Graduate students may also find it useful to identify faculty with interests that might be appropriate for their thesis/dissertation committees. Faculty who are responsible for finding grant or manuscript reviewers will find it useful to identify other UW faculty with specific areas of expertise needed for a review. Research administrators, Department Chairs, etc., may find it useful to get an idea of who their faculty are collaborating with. 4. Can it build my CV for me? It can be used to help build a CV but requires that the researcher check whether all papers of interest are included, and supplement this if needed. SciVal Experts uses journals from Scopus only. The same limitation applies to grant support: SciVal only automatically incorporates NIH grants. Other sources of sponsored research must be added manually at a faculty s discretion.
5. Are the citation numbers accurate? SciVal returns citations for each paper. It captures only those citations that were also in journals in the SCOPUS database. 6. What if most of my publications are in books or other non-journal venues not included in the SCOPUS database? You need to manually add missing publications and other information through the use of the Profile Enhancer tool in order for your profile to accurately reflect the full scope of your research, publications and funding. Publication, grants and patents added through the profile enhancer will inform the creation of your profile, but all other content (such as the CV, awards, and so on) will not. If you need to know which of your publications will be added automatically, access the complete listing of journals covered by SCOPUS, at: http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/facts. You may download the complete list of SOCPUS publications in the Key Links box on the right side of the screen. 7. When I look at my own profile and listing of publications, it is not complete why? SciVal pulls only from publications found in the SCOPUS database. For many faculty, especially those in the health sciences and engineering, the SCOPUS database captures the large majority of publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. If you publish in two somewhat divergent areas, with one area well covered, and the other not covered at all by SCOPUS journals, or you publish almost exclusively in subject areas not covered well by SCOPUS, then your profile will be incomplete. You can manually add publications, sponsored research, and patents to your profile so that your fingerprint is accurate. The Office of Research offers periodic trainings on how to use the profile enhancer to make your profile as robust as possible. If you decide you do not wish to have your expertise profiled on SciVal we are happy to remove you. 8. How frequently are expertise profiles updated? The SciVal expertise profiler updates publications on a weekly basis. However, additions or deletions of faculty names from the Husky SciVal database can only be done on a quarterly basis and are performed manually. Please send any update requests to research@uw.edu 9. I see that it also includes grant information, but it appears incomplete- why? At this point in time, SciVal receives grant data only from the NIH RePORTER database. Thus it is necessary for individuals to add non-nih grants to the profile using the profile enhancer. Grant information added in this manner will help to build the research profile. If you have an NIH grant that does not show up in your Profile, please send an email to research@uw.edu stating the sponsor, award number and title and your name as PI. (If you are not the PI on the grant, SciVal does not list it in your profile.)
10. Most of my funding is NSF yet only NIH data is showing on my profile. When will Elsevier pull in NSF data so it can be visible on my profile? Elsevier does not have immediate plans to add NSF grant information. Individual users may add grant information via the profile enhancer. Grant information added via the profile enhancer will be used in the fingerprint to generate the profile. 11. What is Profile Enhancer? This is a tool that Elsevier provides that allows you to add publications, including books, book chapters, proceedings, or other published material that is not captured in your profile (e.g., not included in the SCOPUS database). You can also add grants, honors, lectures, etc. The additional information you add will be displayed in your profile displayed on SciVal. However, not all of the material you enter using Profile Enhancer is used in creating your fingerprint. Only publications, grants (sponsored research), and patents added through Profile Enhancer will be used in creating your fingerprint. 12. How do I log onto Profile Enhancer for the first time? a) Click on the "Edit your profile" link (located on the top right corner of each profile) b) Click on the "Update my profile with my own information" link, and a prompt will appear c) Click on the "New User or forgot your password" link and enter your institutional email address d) A link will be sent to your institutional email address e) Log into the Profile Enhancer with new credentials and change your password 13. Will there by training available? Yes, we schedule training as needed. We announce the training via the SciVal user listserv. 14. How can I find out if the journals in which I have publications are in the Scopus Database? Go to this URL: http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus/scopus-in-detail/facts and to the title list on the right-hand side of the page. 15. How can I add publications that are not associated with my profile? If they are publications that are part of Scopus, please send an email to research@uw.edu and a change request form will be submitted. If the publications are not Scopus cataloged, then you will have to add them via the profile enhancer. 16. How can I delete publications that are not associated with my profile? Please send an email to research@uw.edu and a change request form will be submitted.
17. I see some publications from early in my publication record that are not reflected on my profile? I did change research focus; is that why? It is possible that a change in research focus may lead to some publications being filtered out. We will first check Scopus to see if those publications are on the site (which they probably are) and then we will send in a profile update form with the missing publications so they can be added to your profile. It would be helpful to send a CV for comparison so we know we have all the missing publications. 18. What if a concept term associated with my research area is not showing? Only the terms in the thesauri used by Elsevier will show as concept terms. 19. Why are some of the terms associated with my profile inaccurate? Profiles are built based upon the thesauri terms Elsevier uses. This can limit the effectiveness of the profile building. Send an email to research@uw.edu and we will attempt to address your specific problem with Elsevier. 20. When I search using the concept search, it fails to find what I m looking for- why? Because the search engine uses a compendium of index terms developed by other professional groups/organization, many common terms may not be in the index. For example, a search of birth defects returns almost no hits. The reason for that is that the MESH headings developed the National Library of Medicine use the term congenital anomalies, not birth defects. The best approach for conducting a concept search is to start with a broad term and then in the results displayed, click on the text: If this isn t what you expected, click here. Clicking here will almost always return what you are interested in, as it does a Boolean logic search for terms related to the thesauri terms. Once you get results from that, it is easy to quickly focus your search using the keyword sub-menus that are returned. 21. What does Manage Your Funding Opportunities at the top right of my Expert Profile screen do? This allows you to access the Experts Funding Integration Module. This is a tool that creates a key concept profile for grant announcements, then compares the profile to your key concept profile. If there is an adequate match, you will receive an email with the grant opportunity information included, much as the Community of Science system does. You can turn this feature off, if it is of no interest to you. You can also customize the kinds of opportunities the module searches for. It currently searches grant announcements from NIH, NSF and most other federal agencies as well as foundations and other nongovernmental sources. For a list of sponsors covered in this module go to: http://www.funding.scival.com/browse/sponsor 22. What s the difference between SciVal Funding and the funding integration module? SciVal funding is a broadly available resource for searching out sponsored research opportunities. This tool is available to anyone with a UW NetID and must be accessed
while on a UW server. The funding integration module is a tool to help faculty and researchers who have profiles in Husky SciVal l Experts to automate the search for funding opportunities matched to their SciVal Experts profile. 23. How do I log onto Funding Integration for the first time? a) Click on the "Manager your Funding Opportunities" link (located below the affiliation of each profile) b) Click on the "New User or forgot your password" link and enter your institutional email address, and a prompt will appear c) A link will be sent to your institutional email address d) Log into the Funding Integration with new credentials and change your password 24. I am receiving funding opportunities that do not fit with my professional background and expertise. Can this be fixed? The funding integration tool is still a work in progress. Elsevier has made the tool more robust but you may find that single terms in your grants and publications can impact your funding opportunities in undesirable ways. We continue to work with Elsevier on this and want to hear about any difficulties you may have so that we can communicate these to them. 25. How do I change the frequency of my funding opportunities alerts? a) Log into the EFIM at the following URL: http://experts.scival.com/uwashington/expertfunding/ b) Click on the tab labeled Alerts c) Choose Yes or No to receive or suppress email alerts d) Choose the Frequency of how often you would like to receive the alerts Weekly, Biweekly or Monthly e) Enter the email where you would like to receive the alerts 26. How do I make changes to my contact information? Send an email with the requested change to research @uw.edu. 27. I would like to add faculty to the site. How can I do this? Chairs and Deans may request to add faculty on a quarterly basis. Please submit the request to research@uw.edu. Discipline-specific Thesauri used in SciVal expertise profiler for key concept terms 1. MeSH (Health Sciences; National Library of Medicine) 2. Compendex (COMPuterized ENgineering index ) 3. GeoTree (Earth & Environmental Sciences ) 4. Arts and Humanities Vocabulary
5. Business and Economics Vocabulary 6. Social Sciences Vocabulary 7. NAL Thesaurus (National Agricultural Library) 8. Enriched Connecting Mathematics Thesaurus 9. Thesaurus for the Social Sciences 10. NASA thesaurus 11. INSI/EDTE joint thesaurus (Plasma Physics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, Nuclear and High-energy Physics) 12. STW Thesaurus (Business & Economics )