Putting Research Networking Data Where Users Will Actually See It

Anirvan Chatterjee, Leslie Yuan, Eric Meeks, Katja Reuter, Cynthia Piontkowski, Maninder Kahlon

Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of California, San Francisco

This project was supported by NIH/NCRR UCSF-CTSI Grant Number UL1 RR024131. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official

views of the NIH.

Clinical and Translational Science Institute / CTSIAccelerating Research to Improve Health SFUC

How users see the data How it worksMonthly

reach

Search engines

Users of Google and other search engines (including UCSF’s

internal search) see our pages come up frequently in search

results, making it easy to access.

Our listings on Google contain an extra line of metadata below the

URL.

We optimized pages for search engines by implementing best practices: improving

copy, adding semantic metadata, generating sitemaps, linking to related

pages, and listing canonical URLs to prevent double-indexing.

We tried to craft authoritative pages worth linking to; 128 UCSF and ~500 non-UCSF websites link to us, helping boost search

engine rankings.

27,000 visitsSearch engines drive 63% of on-campus visits and 79% of

external visits to UCSF Profiles.

Our pages appear on Google search results pages 300k

times/month!

Campus website

s

The data powers local researcher and clinician directory information on various campus websites.

Each page includes links back to UCSF Profiles, but users don’t have to click through, as most critical fields are already listed.

Participating campus websites use our XML and JSON APIs to embed our data into their pages. This prevents duplicated work (e.g. maintaining up-to-date lists of publications

for each person), leading to operational efficiencies.

1,100+ pages

on UCSF campus websites

powered by our API data

Pages refer negligible traffic back to us, but ensure that the data’s seen, and support search

rankings.

Campus director

y

UCSF’s campus directory search results prominently link to research profiles on

our site.

These are the only “more about this person” links on the page.

We developed a lightweight API in JSON format, suitable for use in web applications.

The UCSF Directory team uses the API to automatically add links to research profiles,

whenever available.

1,750 visitsThe directory is the source

of16% of our on-campus visits,

and 3% of external visits.

Campus mobile

app

UCSF’s iOS, Android, and mobile web apps display faculty

research interests and recent publications directly from the

mobile directory.

Publications link to PubMed Mobile, to allow browsing

abstracts on the go. Users can connect to UCSF Profiles for more

details.

The mobile web team uses our JSON API to pull live data from our system in realtime using JavaScript, which gets displayed to

end-users.

We added a custom “mobile” flag to our JSON API, which returns links to PubMed

Mobile (as opposed to regular PubMed) for publications.

100 views74% of visits from iPhone

users.Reach expected to increase as adoption of Android app

grows.

IntroductionHow does one attract users to research networking systems like VIVO and Profiles? UCSF launched the UCSF Profiles research networking platform in September 2010. We worked to draw users, but couldn’t convince users to change their behavior.

StrategyWe tried to reach our audience on web properties they already used by making it easy to index, consume, and reuse our research networking data. We implemented this “Profiles Everywhere” strategy via technology development and outreach to partners.

ResultsWe substantially increased UCSF Profiles use by making data visible to preexisting web properties. As of March 2012, 99% of visits to our site don’t begin with direct type-in traffic to our home page. Overall visits have increased more than fivefold since October 2010.

ConclusionWe recommend a strong focus on integrating data from research networking websites with search engines and high-traffic campus web properties as a critical step to ensure utilization.

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