Clinical and TranslationalScience Institute / CTSIat the University of California, San Francisco

The Impact of OpenSocial at UCSF in the Context of Changing Priorities for Research Profiling SystemsMelbourne, February, 2016

What is OpenSocial?

• An open standard for building small web applications (gadgets) that will run on any open social compliant web site (the container)

• The gadgets are built with XML/HTML/JavaScript

• The container is meant to be a social networking website, such as LinkedIn, UCSF Profiles, or Facebook.

The OpenSocial Story

• An attempt by Google to dethrone Facebook• The attempt failed, resulting in a tarnished

brand but a good technology: Apache Shindig• Why is the technology good? Because it

allows your web site to be a platform• Facebook and UCSF Profiles are both good

examples of web sites that are platforms

Open Research Networking Gadgets (ORNG) = OpenSocial + VIVO LOD

• We created ORNG for two reasons1. To expose all researcher data to the gadgets,

JSON-LD (and VIVO) made this possible 2. We wanted to create our own brand apart from

OpenSocial

• Now, like Facebook, we are not OpenSocial compliant (but we are ORNG compliant), and this is good!

Beyond Mandated Data:Where to next for Research Profiling Systems?

• Don’t just think about the data, think about the display

• With ORNG, a large amount of what you see on a researchers page will be external data, such as social media and grey literature

• Grey literature is faster and more consumable by the general public than traditional literature, we love it

How to go about Collecting Information for Profiles?

• Automate when possible• Semi-automate when possible• Do the work for researchers yourself or with

departmental administrators when possible• Engage researchers to use your Research

Profiling product and make them not regret it

Driving Traffic and SEO Rankings

• Steal anything and everything you can from http://profiles.ucsf.edu/anirvan.chattergee

• Ways to increasing web traffic – SEO product changes: clean URL’s, schema.org,

etc.– Local environment: user generated content, links

to your pages from other systems at your institution.

– External environment: Work with researchers that make a buzz about themselves on line.

Delivering Value:Engaging Researchers in Profile Management

• One way to engage a (UCSF) researcher, find something they care about: themselves

• With ORNG and our JSON Web Tokens (JWT) extension, researchers can now check their page views through UCSF Profiles

• We have > 10 logins a day for this feature!• Future goal: like Amazon, acknowledge

recognized vs authenticated users

Promoting your University withResearch Profiling Systems

• Research Profiling = Researcher Marketing • Tell a complete story about your researchers• Make your institution look good by making

your researchers look good and be found• The information needs to accurate, complete,

attractive and understandable• Play to the strengths of researchers that “get”

Research Profiling and the internet

The State of ORNG and The Impact of ORNG on UCSF Profiles

• ORNG picked up by 6+ institutions• Apache Shindig is in the attic, Apache Rave

seems stalled• OpenSocial/ORNG/Shindig has allowed us to

create many new features for UCSF Profiles with an acceptable level of risk

• Not every risk has led to success, but the overall effort has been a great success

UCSF Profiles Quotes from the UCSF Community

“Profiles is the best tool ever. I use it constantly.” Sarah Paris

“Profiles is splendid. Congratulations to you and your team.” Bob Wachter

“I loved the idea then, and I love it now.” Dan Lowenstein

Next Steps for Research Networking

• Actually linking our linked open data: more cross institutional connections

• Today we are like MySpace, we need to be more like Facebook or LinkedIn: more targeted content for logged in researchers

• Trusted researcher-to-researcher communication (like LinkedIn)

Thank you!

• http://profiles.ucsf.edu/eric.meeks• http://profiles.ucsf.edu/anirvan.chatterjee• http://profiles.ucsf.edu/brian.turner• http://profiles.ucsf.edu/leslie.yuan• Griffin Webber (Harvard University)• David Eichmann (Univeristy of Iowa)