Aggie Experts

What is Aggie Experts?

The UC Davis Aggie Experts system provides a single point of discovery for research and scholarship expertise and professional information about UC Davis faculty and scholars.

Use Cases

• Discover collaborators, mentors and experts
• Save time on administrative tasks by reusing profile content in C.V.s, departmental websites and other applications

Timeline

We have now pre-released Aggie Experts for UC Davis Academic Senate faculty. The platform integrates information about publications, grants, academic affiliation, and professional websites. Faculty can export their publication data as RIS files to reuse in MyInfoVault (MIV) or in citation management software. We are working closely with the MIV team, and faculty will soon be able to reuse their Aggie Experts grants, too.

Our future efforts will be focused on including Academic Federation faculty and researchers, expanding support for collaboration and mentorship discovery, and expanding the types of scholarship included in the system.

What Data Sources are Used?

• We use the UC Davis identity management system for the scholar’s name, title and unit affiliation. Researchers can change that information in the campus directory listing.
• Publications metadata is based on scholars’ claims of publications in support of the UC Open Access Policy. Faculty can review with publications they have claimed, and what additional publications are pending their review and approval in the UC Publication Management System.
• Grant information is retrieved from the University of California’s data warehouse.

Acknowledgements

Aggie Experts was first piloted with the College of Engineering. Rolling out the platform department by department within the college allowed us to collect feedback that guided user interface improvements and further development, and we will continue our close work with faculty as we move past the pre-release phase.

We are greatly indebted to our Faculty Advisory Board members: Professors Tessa Hill (Associate Vice Provost for Academic Programs, Public Scholarship & Engagement, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences), Michael Lazzara (Associate Vice Provost of Academic Programs and Partnerships, Department of Spanish and Portuguese), Matt Bishop (Department of Computer Science); Jiayi Young (Department of Design); Anuurad Erdembileg (Assistant Dean for Research and Director, School of Medicine Office of Research); and former members Michael Rios (Vice Provost of Public Scholarship, Department of Human Ecology) and Ricardo Castro (formerly in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and now a member of the faculty at Lehigh University).

Researcher Expertise Registry to Combat COVID-19

To support UC Davis efforts to accelerate research around COVID-19, we rolled out an early version of researcher profiles. It included information about the research and interests of UC Davis campus members who indicated their interest to the Office of Research to find collaborators specifically for COVID-19 projects. The effort improved our understanding of developing collaborative applications and engagement with researchers. We are now fully focused on developing and improving Aggie Experts, and this initial instance has been sunset.