Working the flow of intelligence
Jinfo Blog

By Joanna Ptolomey

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I believe that leveraging intelligence within an organisation or a community is key to the innovation and future funding possibilities. About 18 months ago I wrote specifically about this on the LiveWire with specific nods to products we have reviewed at VIP – Scopus and Web of Science, API UniPHY and BiomedExperts.com.

All of these have features for leveraging community or organisational intelligence and helping workflow. So it was great to see a flurry of news updates around these topics.

In the first instance, my attention was drawn to Stanford Medical School and their recent launch of a private internal social networking service called CAP Network. The reasoning behind the system is straightforward - to encourage communication and workflow across disciplines, departments and staff groups.

Hopefully this will ensure better working practices in order to harness the power and output of the institution as a whole – thought to number around 10,000 individuals. This could provide great evidence and best practice in governance and accountability for attracting investors, funding grants and alumni.

There are a further two news gems both from Elsevier (Scopus is one of their products) worth mentioning too.

Firstly the Elsevier launch of SciVal funding app on SciVerse Applications. SciVal is a planning and funding tool aimed at decision makers where demonstrating a return on investment is imperative.

Informed decisions, getting the right strategic direction, managing resources and being up to date with funding opportunities is what this product is all about. Again the idea of leveraging the researcher and organisational intelligence by better workflow and innovation strategies, assessing strengths in a global market place and explore underexposed funding opportunities.

This new development now links SciVal funding with SciVerse Scopus and SciVerse Science Direct and will retrieve up to five relevant funding opportunities. A great little add-on feature.

The second nugget resolves around the SciVerse interface itself and an agreement with Ex Libris for their bX article recommender application. The bX application uses the academic community to generate content around highly granular article usage and recommendations within the scholarly setting.

This application will allow Scopus and Science Direct users to see bX recommendations (suggestions for further reading) as well as articles found in those particular databases. Recommendations and relevancy from your peer community group are powerful – the bX application would seem like a logical partnership to enhance an already powerful product portfolio.

It is important that institutions are aware of the leveraging and power of their own intelligence. Not just as a standalone organisation, but where they sit globally and where there are opportunities for working with other organisations. This has an impact of their strategic decision making and direction of priorities and of course funding. Managing the workflow is also a crucial element to success.

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