Community of science provides various research support services, including a matching service between funding opportunities and researchers, and between those looking for and those providing particular expertises.
Community of Science (COS) is the leading global resource for hard-to-find information critical to scientific research and other projects across all disciplines. We aggregate valuable information so you spend less precious time and money searching for the information you need, leaving you more time and money for your projects. [Community of Science (COS) – Funding resource, expertise database and abstract management system]
I remember looking at this a couple of years ago. My interest was quite narrow. COS claims to have details of 500,000 researchers across 1,600 institutions. At the time we were having discussions with Dspace folks at MIT about Thom‘s name authority web service. One issue was that many people depositing materials in an institutional repository would not be represented in library name authority files, becaues they had not produced books or orther materials which had been catalogued. Will these files need to extend what they include to remain valuable? In any case, it seemed to me that if you wanted to move upstream with the authority control process Community of Science would be a good place to experiment – given the number of registered and profiled researchers it has.
As research support services develop, including the management of expertise information and institutional repository services, we may end up rethinking how to evolve name authority services – to be more inclusive of the range of publishing and research activity. Especially, as more of the production, disclosure and reporting of expertise information and research outputs is brought into consistent management frameworks.
In the context of this broader focus on research support, the acquisition of COS by CSA is interesting. Will they, for example, look at integrating RefWorks and COS to broaden the range of research support services?
Related entry:
