How does one attract users to research networking platforms like VIVO or Harvard profiles? UCSF used a data-driven strategy, making it easy for others to consume, index, and reuse research networking data to substantially increase utilization by distributing data via search engines, external websites, and mobile apps. Poster presented at the AMIA 2012 Clinical Research Informatics conference.

1. 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
Introduction
How does one attract users to research networking How users see the data How it works Monthly reach
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.
Users of Google and other search
engines (including UCSF’s internal
We optimized pages for search engines by
implementing best practices: improving copy, 27,000 visits
search) see our pages come up adding semantic metadata, generating sitemaps,
Strategy
Search frequently in search results, making linking to related pages, and listing canonical Search engines drive 63% of on-
campus visits and 79% of external
it easy to access. URLs to prevent double-indexing.
We tried to reach our audience on web properties they engines We tried to craft authoritative pages worth linking
visits to UCSF Profiles.
already used by making it easy to index, consume, Our listings on Google contain an to; 128 UCSF and ~500 non-UCSF websites link Our pages appear on Google search
and reuse our research networking data. We extra line of metadata below the URL. to us, helping boost search engine rankings.
implemented this “Profiles Everywhere” strategy via results pages 300k times/month!
technology development and outreach to partners.
The data powers local researcher
and clinician directory information 1,100+ pages
Results on various campus websites.
Participating campus websites use our XML and
on UCSF campus websites
We substantially increased UCSF Profiles use by making Campus JSON APIs to embed our data into their pages.
This prevents duplicated work (e.g. maintaining powered by our API data
data visible to preexisting web properties. As of March Each page includes links back to
2012, 99% of visits to our site don’t begin with direct websites UCSF Profiles, but users don’t have to
up-to-date lists of publications for each person),
leading to operational efficiencies. Pages refer negligible traffic back to
type-in traffic to our home page. Overall visits have click through, as most critical fields us, but ensure that the data’s seen,
increased more than fivefold since October 2010. are already listed. and support search rankings.
Daily UCSF Profiles visits Daily UCSF Profiles visits
from within UCSF network from outside UCSF network
200 1,000
UCSF’s campus directory search
1,750 visits
180 900
160 800
results prominently link to research We developed a lightweight API in JSON format,
140
120
100
700
600
500
Campus profiles on our site. suitable for use in web applications. The UCSF
80 400 Directory team uses the API to automatically add The directory is the source of
60
40
300
200 directory These are the only “more about this links to research profiles, whenever available. 16% of our on-campus visits,
20
0
100
0
person” links on the page. and 3% of external visits.
UCSF’s iOS, Android, and mobile web
Conclusion apps display faculty research The mobile web team uses our JSON API to pull
We recommend a strong focus on integrating data Campus interests and recent publications
directly from the mobile directory.
live data from our system in realtime using 100 views
from research networking websites with search JavaScript, which gets displayed to end-users.
engines and high-traffic campus web properties as a mobile Publications link to PubMed Mobile, to We added a custom “mobile” flag to our JSON 74% of visits from iPhone users.
critical step to ensure utilization. API, which returns links to PubMed Mobile (as Reach expected to increase as
app allow browsing abstracts on the go.
Users can connect to UCSF Profiles opposed to regular PubMed) for publications. adoption of Android app grows.
This project was supported by NIH/NCRR UCSF-CTSI Grant Number UL1 RR024131. Its contents are for more details.
solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
Clinical and Translational Science Institute / CTSI
Accelerating Research to Improve Health