Led by the University of Florida, a consortium of universities and one institute have recently received ARRA funding to create a compendium of scientists that will cover seven American institutions.

Yup folks, unless you are an NIH employee involved in managing extra-mural funding, there is no comprehensive source of researcher information about tax-funded bioresearchers accessible to scientists (or tax payers), other than what is provided by individual funding agencies.

Even then, these portals are focused strictly on serving a limited spectrum of queries, and they are not integrated, such that there is no practical way to answer basic question such as “list all university scientists involved in bioresearch last year in the US”. Worst still, until very recently the ability of NIH (the biggest US biomedical funder) to deliver data about whom and what it funds was remarkably poor, though it has now made up for it, thanks to its excellent RePORTER tool.

As the press release states: “We think this will have a huge multiplier effect and will allow researchers to find new partners and other ways to use their research,” said Judith Russell, dean of the University Libraries at UF. “For years, librarians have helped researchers find the information they need. This is another type of critical information scientists need.” Research relies on scientists working together, so any software that facilitates the social aspects of that process constitutes an obvious, low-hanging fruit way of enhancing research, especially since it doesn’t involve having to figure out how to split the atom, develop molecular biology or otherwise coming with groundbreaking developments.

Given its importance, you have to wonder why it took so long to get started on building a comprehensive, “broad public” system. By way of explanation, bear in mind that many (most?) universities have a terrible time just figuring out who is researching within their walls, suffering as they do from the kind of stove-piping and other information ills that brought us 911 among other notable failures. Then again, one could argue that Web 2.0 technologies and methods have only recently reached sufficient maturity to consider a comprehensive researcher portal, so perhaps the timing isn’t so off. Or not: It could have been done five or even ten years ago, methinks.

Although one can fault the federal government for taking so long to get started, we should all note the wisdom and innovativeness of this project. As far as I know, no other country has embarked on something like this, and certainly no country as large as the US, with the largest research ecosystem in the world. To my mind, this is the kind of far-ranging project that is naturally suited for ARRA funding, and I’m thrilled to see it recognized as such. So hats off to our civil service friends: well done! If I’m right, it may serve as a powerful force enabler for American science in the years to come.

Now, back to nitpicking: One might wonder why NIH didn’t simply fund the National Library of Medicine to do this work. It would fit very logically within their mission, and indeed would help NLM significantly, as examplified with Thomson’s ResearcherID project, aimed at making it easier to disambiguate researchers and their contributions. Well, ARRA funds weren’t available to NLM, so perhaps it’s as simple as that. Still, I couldn’t avoid being surprised at finding the University of Florida being the “prime” on this grant. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t think of UF when pondering “Semantic Web” and “expertise finding”. If anyone knows better, please do light my lantern.

On the technical side, the proposed compendium will use the VIVO system, a nice piece of software developed by the Cornell Libraries (there’s that library connection again). Interestingly, the software is Open Source to boot, though I haven’t found a download site yet. More once I get my hands on it.