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Startup Knode Teams with Wiley To Offer Custom Researcher Portals

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/09/14

A startup that offers a cloud-based biomedical search and profiling platform is teaming up with a major publisher of scientific and technical texts to create customized research portals for academic organizations and scientific societies. Knode will be working with John Wiley & Sons to set up searchable research networks to help users locate research expertise.

Currently, Knode's focus is on life sciences, but the company expects to expand to other fields "soon," according to an interview with CEO David Steinberg posted on the Wiley Web site. Knode works by extracting data from public sources, including United States patents, PubMed abstracts, and NIH grants, and clinicaltrials.gov. By using semantic mining and data extraction algorithms, the technology creates profiles of researchers based on data about them such as publication history, patents, clinical trials and grants.

Portal users can search by field of research, name, or affiliation; custom filters help identify influential people and "rising stars." The expectation is that researchers use the application to find other experts, identify and connect with collaborators and promote their expertise.

The work with Wiley will enable academic bodies and scholarly societies to set up custom analytics for their members. Wiley currently works with more than 800 societies, representing two million members, including publishing their journals and managing memberships.

"Successful research outcomes depend on effective teamwork and interdisciplinary connectivity," said Sean Pidgeon, Wiley's vice president and director of Research Solutions. "By building a network that emphasizes the broad expertise of scientists rather than narrow measures based on the research literature, Knode has created exciting opportunities to enhance the quality of collaborative research."

Added Steinberg, "The focus is on providing an active, dynamic platform for society members to engage with each other, and for society leadership to better track, manage, recruit and communicate with members."

Knode is currently deployed at a number of institutions, including the University of Louisville, Vanderbilt U Medical Center, and the University of Iowa, among others. A public beta version of the Knode expertise portal can be accessed at knodeinc.com.