examining a researcher's LinkedIn network

We’ve recently added functionality that links our Researcher Profiles to public LinkedIn profiles.

Why bother, you might think? The reasons are eloquently described in an interesting study by a group of researchers in academia, software companies and one of my favorite defense contractors, MITRE Corporation.

Having researched the requirements for expertise location systems for biomedical scientists, one of Schleyer et al.’s (2008) major findings is the need to exploit “… others’ social networks when searching for collaborators”. In plain language, this just means that when considering a collaboration, people find it helpful to understand who is associated with the prospective collaborator, perhaps to determine whether a common contact could perform introductions, but also to get a sense of the person (kind of like in high school, where one is often judged by their crowd). Yes, biomedical researchers are just like everyone else when it comes to socialization.

In short, after perusing the professional and scientific aspects of a potential collaborator, you’ll now be able to jump to LinkedIn to figure out whether there is a contact known to you both that can tell you more about him/her. Neat, huh?

Of course, such “social networking inter-connection” is one thing LinkedIn does admirably well in the professional realm, and so it didn’t take much to convince us to enable our Researcher Profiles to show a link to an individual’s profile when it’s available. Note that you will need your own LinkedIn account to be able examine someone else’s network.

Going back to the study, Schleyer et al. present ten major conclusions derived from interviews and a comprehensive literature review. The interviewees were from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. As with all expertise finding studies I know of, the results are retrospective only, since no scientist was actually observed in the process of seeking expertise. Though understandable, this limitation is unfortunate, given the relative inability of human subjects to recall and accurately describe their motivations and thought processes post facto.

Many sectors of American society like to dump on the federal government. I often disagree as to the pertinence of these criticisms. Rather, I frequently observe amazingly smart initiatives and accomplishments, close to miraculous given how large an organization we are talking about.

Here’s an example: Applying the principle of search motivation to connect individuals who may have valuable information to share. Called iHarvest, it is being developed for the Department of State so that government employees who are researching similar individuals can discover that others are doing the same. That very observation might be highly meaningful if one party has bits of information the others don’t.

Yes, there are all sorts of knowledge management issues here. E.g., what if no one has any “proprietary” information? Even so, there is value in having the parties come together to realize that they don’t know any more as a group than they do individually. Remember, the beginning of wisdom involves understanding the limits of one’s knowledge.

Now, where might have you heard of this business of using the search motivation to connect X with Y? Hum, perhaps…Google! Yup, that’s the core of the Big G’s business model right there, now being applied for matters of security.

And oh by the way, this was brought to my attention by a monitoring agent of the government’s impressive FedBizOpps.gov repository of business opportunities, all for free, though you will likely need an account to access the link to the description of iHarvest.

Below I’ve highlighted the significant bit from the project description, just to spare you reading the required turgid governmentese:

The Department of State (DOS), Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) has an unusual and compelling need for immediate support for a unique iHarvest capability that leverages new information technology to automatically build user models based on analyst or operators activity and interests. This capability will automatically alert DS personnel to the fact of other individuals within DS that are conducting similar research or analysis and connect both parties. Additionally, the capability will support connections outside of DS with other interagency partners as DOS embraces a Whole of Government approach. In order to transform the enterprise of DS into an interagency compatible organization, there is an immediate need for greater data discovery among our intelligence partners and within DOS writ large, and this capability is an immediate first step to address this need. Particularly, as US Department of Defense forces reduce their presence in Iraq the DS agents immediately require an automated mechanism for sharing information amongst themselves and interagency partners. The capability will plug-in to DS existing situational awareness systems that support intuitive spatial interaction (Google Earth). Without this capability, the Departments ability to conduct diplomacy and business in high threat areas and around the world may be at risk which could affect the Departments mission. Further, it would impair the Departments ability to support national security requirements. Vital pieces of information that one individual is working with could go undiscovered by an office (or agency) that is involved with the same problem set. DS personnel are in danger at these high threat areas if the protective services personnel are not provided with this capability there exists a grave danger for their personal injury as well as injury to the individuals they are assigned to protect. The objective of this activity is to provide iHarvest integration research, design, development, integration, fielding and technical review support to the DS office: establish an alternate services and operations center for integration, operational testing, and evaluation. This information center will be an intricate part of a network of agencies where personnel conduct multi security level intelligence, law enforcement and counterterrorism operations.

Very cool, and great idea. My hat is off to the nameless bureaucrat(s) responsible for getting this off the ground. Who says government is necessarily lacking in imagination? Not I…

Interesting case study of POPS produced by Clark & Parsia , a semantic web firm.

POPS is a NASA expertise location system which aims to “integrate NASA’s information about its nearly 70,000 combined civil service and contractor workforce in one place, linking the relevant, related information to form a comprehensive data service for staffers, workforce planners, analysts, and related personnel.”

POPS makes use of semantic Web technologies such as RDF to integrate data which are delivered via jSpace , is a visual query builder and Linked Data browser for SPARQL and other RDF query languages.

I particularly like their social network visualizer and its ability to overlay skills on top of the familiar “who-has-worked-with-whom” network (fig. 2 in the white paper), though it does look like an awful lot of navigation may be required. I also wonder about how much detail can be overlaid unto the network. Still, very nice work.

POPS' Social Network plugin