OurResearch Receives $688,000 Grant from Navigation Fund to Enhance the OpenAlex User Interface
Ed. Note: Congratulations to Jason Priem and the entire OurResearch team! We use Open Alex daily and look forward to the upcoming enhancements.
From the OurResearch Blog:
OurResearch is proud to announce a grant of $688,800 from The Navigation Fund to develop and launch an open, sustainable, web-based research intelligence (RI) module for the OpenAlex website. Our goal is to support expert finding, trend detection, and knowledge gap identification for researchers and research users. The RI module will serve as a map of the research landscape that’s easy to use for non-technical users, powerful for technical users, and supportive in helping all users increase their technical skills.
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While we are thrilled by the early success of OpenAlex, we have noticed two significant barriers that are impeding more widespread adoption of OpenAlex: (1) many people (especially decision-makers) struggle to understand the promise of OpenAlex without seeing its potential first hand and (2) even when people can imagine how OpenAlex can benefit their work, most do not have the technical resources and capacity to create the desired insights from the openly available data.
With this grant, we have just hired a Senior Frontend Developer, starting December 2, 2024 to design and iteratively release new UI features. The expected UI enhancements will lead to better and more timely research-based outcomes in both enterprise and academia, including more productive collaborations, faster investigation of promising research fronts, and quicker time-to-market for new discoveries. Stay tuned for exciting updates to the OpenAlex web interface in 2025!
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Filed under: Data Files, Funding, News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.