About

The Forum

Expert finder systems (EFS) have been serving universities, government agencies, businesses, and non-profit organizations for more than two decades. These systems showcase expertise, resources, and institutional strengths. They support decision-making, research analytics, scholarly communications, competitive analysis, and specialized portals on emerging high-impact topics. EFS also facilitates matchmaking for collaborative teams, innovation, university-industry partnerships, entrepreneurship, and mentoring. These systems have become a major tool for economic development in many states and countries.

After a successful launch in 2019 and 2021, the International Forum on Expert Finder Systems is back for its third exciting event in 2023.

The theme of this year's EFS Forum, "Connecting the Dots," reflects the aspirational goal of the conference to facilitate engagement, understanding, and community building across a diversity of silos. These include discrete use cases, stakeholders, and product user communities, among others. In addition to greater technical interoperability across systems, we also hope to facilitate greater "social interoperability" as well.

The 2023 forum will welcome 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
• RIMS, FARS, EFS, and analytics

Attendees will be able to share ideas and information about the current uses of such systems, the need for new features to support emerging uses, best practices for starting and managing a system, and strategies for enhancing stakeholder engagement.

The forum also offers the opportunity to build a community of practice and explore the possibility of establishing a professional organization to provide leadership and develop ongoing events.

Goals