About the Forum

After a successful launch in 2019, the International Forum on Expert Finder Systems is back for its second exciting event.

The 2021 forum will welcome expert finder system practitioners from the university, research, and economic development communities to explore

Community- and system-building
Promising practices
Value proposition and sustainability
Platforms and applications
Role of libraries in research information management systems
EFS and economic development

Register for our free virtual series to be held February 11 - March 18, 2021, to explore the potential of expert finder systems to promote research collaboration, scholarly communication, and research commercialization in universities.

Who Should Attend

Researchers, practitioners, faculty, librarians, administrators, platform providers,
and other stakeholders in the following areas are invited:

Expert finder systems

Research information management systems

Economic development

Faculty advancement

Libraries

Scholarly communications

Research commercialization

Industry

Related areas

Goals of the Forum

Understand

Stakeholders and their goals
Challenges in developing systems for research information management, collaboration, and economic development
How EFS supports economic development

Explore

Research on EFS community- and system-building
Promising practices
Platforms and applications
Value proposition and sustainability strategies
Role of libraries in RIM systems
Industry Uses of EFS
Researcher disambiguation strategies
Semantic Web, taxonomies, and ontologies
Use cases

Connect

Network with other stakeholders
Discuss challenges and priorities
Create a community of practice

EFS Ecosystem

Expert finder systems are directories, profiling sites, or social networking sites that employ knowledge management tools to gather, manage, and publish searchable information about expertise and resources. Expert finder systems may be maintained by a variety of providers--from commercial entities to research universities--using a wide range of commercial, locally developed, or open-source products.

Expert finder systems can support research collaboration, help bring new technologies to market, promote innovation and entrepreneurship, and contribute to regional economic development efforts.

RIM Systems

Research information management (RIM) systems are an important part of the EFS ecosystem. A RIM system provides infrastructure and workflows for collecting and curating metadata about research and scholars as part of an institutional process that may include the following units:

Library
Tech Transfer
Research
Communications
Provost
Human Resources

The data can then be publicly shared through an EFS portal. A RIM system may support multiple uses, such as activity reporting workflows, assessment activities, and faculty web page content, while also populating the EFS. Through this data sharing, a RIM system can make it a seamless process for scholars to participate in one or more expert finder systems at the state, regional, and national levels.