EAGER-Profiles: Using researcher profiles to demonstrate the impact of investments in science

评估科学投资的回报需要准确地将研究投入（例如，赠款和合同）与研究产出（例如，出版物和专利）联系起来。由于今天的许多重大发现都是由大型多机构、跨学科团队（通常由不同的赞助商支持）产生的，潜在的影响遍及不同的领域，因此准确地将产出与投入联系起来可能是一项挑战。这项研究调查了一个在线分析系统是否以及在多大程度上聚集了研究人员个人的研究数据，促进了将研究投入与产出联系起来的过程，并为科学家、机构、出版商和机构提供了好处。它比较了使用不同数据源的价值，例如联邦系统、机构存储库、商业数据库、图书管理员和管理员手动输入数据以及科学家自己输入数据，以填充一个原型网站，介绍来自多个机构的计算机科学家。智力价值：这项研究在很多方面都有新的突破。它确定获取每个数据源所需的费用和努力，包括消除名称歧义所需的资源，以便将有关科学贡献的数据与负责这些数据的正确人员联系起来；它通过测量科学家在没有研究人员分析系统的帮助下手动定位数据并将其输入在线表格所需的时间，计算每个数据源提供的管理负担的潜在减少；它评估哪些数据源包含了关于高影响力跨机构或多学科研究的最多信息，使用数据挖掘技术生成协作和主题集群图。这项研究适合于EAGER项目，因为它既高风险——因为结果取决于多个软件产品、机构、机构和数据源在快速时间框架内的协调——又高回报，因为一个成功的原型将加速国家研究人员分析系统的实施，从而使多个利益相关者受益。计算机科学领域体现了全国范围内的研究人员档案系统的所有挑战和潜在回报。计算机科学家受到许多不同机构的资助（NSF、NIH、DOE、DOD、NASA等）；他们的研究成果有多种形式（出版物、会议报告、软件、数据库、算法、专利等）；他们在许多学科（如医学、经济学、工程学、物理学和社会科学）上进行合作。更广泛的影响：一个基于链接开放数据的可公开访问的国家研究人员档案系统，除了能够更准确地衡量联邦科学投资的回报外，还有望带来许多好处。这些好处包括有可能简化研究人员的资助申请和报告过程，确定没有利益冲突的审稿人，帮助研究人员找到合作者，为受训者和初级研究人员找到导师和工作，并使科学家能够展示他们的工作。

Evaluating the return on investment in science involves accurately associating research inputs (e.g., grants and contracts) with research outputs (e.g., publications and patents). Because many of today's significant discoveries are produced by large multi-institution, cross-disciplinary teams -- often supported by different sponsors, with potential impact spread across different fields -- accurately linking outputs to inputs can be challenging. This research investigates whether and to what extent an online profiling system that aggregates research data around the individual researcher facilitates the processes of linking research inputs to outputs and provides benefits to scientists, institutions, publishers, and agencies. It compares the value of using different data sources, such as federal systems, institutional repositories, commercial databases, manual data entry by librarians and administrators, and data entry by the scientists themselves, to populate a prototype website that profiles computer scientists from multiple institutions. Intellectual Merit: The research breaks new ground in a variety of ways. It determines the cost and effort required to obtain each data source, including the resources needed to disambiguate names in order to link data on scientific contributions to the correct people responsible for them; it calculates the potential reduction in administrative burden each data source provides by measuring the amount of time it takes for a scientist, without the help of a researcher profiling system, to manually locate the data and enter it into an online form; and it evaluates which data sources contain the most information about high-impact cross-institutional or multi-disciplinary research, using data mining techniques to generate collaboration and topic-cluster maps.This study is appropriate for the EAGER program because it is both high-risk -- in that the outcome depends on the coordination of multiple software products, institutions, agencies and data sources in a rapid timeframe -- and high-reward, in that a successful prototype would accelerate the implementation of a national researcher profiling system that benefits multiple stakeholders.The field of Computer Science exemplifies all the challenges and potential rewards of a nation-wide researcher profiling system. Computer scientists are funded by many different agencies (NSF, NIH, DOE, DOD, NASA, etc.); their research outputs take many forms (publications, conference presentations, software, databases, algorithms, patents, etc.); and they collaborate across many disciplines (such as medicine, economics, engineering, physics, and social science). Broader impacts: A publicly-accessible national researcher-profiling system based on linked open data promises numerous benefits beyond enabling more accurate measures of return on federal investment in science. These benefits include the potential to streamline the grant application and reporting process for researchers, identify reviewers without conflicts of interest, help researchers find collaborators, match trainees and junior investigators with mentors and jobs, and enable scientists to showcase their work.