3 ms·

So, not trying to be a dick, but what does it do? Is it supposed to be a better Google Scholar? The "about" page is pretty terse and all it tells me is that y

by pseut 14y ago

So, not trying to be a dick, but what does it do? Is it supposed to be a better Google Scholar? The "about" page is pretty terse and all it tells me is that your site is "lovingly crafted" which I'm sure is very wonderful, but uninformative.

mhluongo 14y ago
That's not "dick" at all- we need better messaging. We're a people-focused academic search engine, currently for computer science. Instead of just returning papers, we also deliver authors relevant to those papers. The idea is that there's a bunch of value in the citation and co-authorship networks that aren't exposed when results are simply flat PDFs.
- pseut 14y ago
  Who is this aimed for? PhD students? Faculty? Businesses looking for consultants? I'm not that far along in my career (assistant prof in econ) but I know many of the people working in my area personally, so it's not clear how much value I'd get out of a search engine like yours -- not that the information isn't useful, but people working in the area have already internalized a lot of it. For prospective grad students or other people outside the field, that obviously wouldn't apply.
  - mhluongo 14y ago
    Right now, I think we'll be most useful to grad students. I think we'll also be a good tool for lit review, less cohesive fields, or interdisciplinary work. We've found your anecdote to be true time and again, though the effect varies by field. I spoke to two CS professors who had interesting views. The first told me he "knew everyone", and that the tool wasn't worth his time- the second said that he "thought he knew everyone", but had a great use regardless. He wanted his students and peers to try it so that they could learn the movers in his part of computer science, and take over the conference he'd been organizing.
    - pseut 14y ago
      You may want to check out the RePEc sites for ideas, they're for econ, so you may not have come across them. One main page is: http://ideas.repec.org http://ideas.repec.org author listings are: http://ideas.repec.org/i/eall.html http://ideas.repec.org/i/eall.html Just another possible source of ideas.

by pseut 14y ago

mhluongo 14y ago

That's not "dick" at all- we need better messaging. We're a people-focused academic search engine, currently for computer science. Instead of just returning papers, we also deliver authors relevant to those papers. The idea is that there's a bunch of value in the citation and co-authorship networks that aren't exposed when results are simply flat PDFs.

pseut 14y ago
Who is this aimed for? PhD students? Faculty? Businesses looking for consultants? I'm not that far along in my career (assistant prof in econ) but I know many of the people working in my area personally, so it's not clear how much value I'd get out of a search engine like yours -- not that the information isn't useful, but people working in the area have already internalized a lot of it. For prospective grad students or other people outside the field, that obviously wouldn't apply.
- mhluongo 14y ago
  Right now, I think we'll be most useful to grad students. I think we'll also be a good tool for lit review, less cohesive fields, or interdisciplinary work. We've found your anecdote to be true time and again, though the effect varies by field. I spoke to two CS professors who had interesting views. The first told me he "knew everyone", and that the tool wasn't worth his time- the second said that he "thought he knew everyone", but had a great use regardless. He wanted his students and peers to try it so that they could learn the movers in his part of computer science, and take over the conference he'd been organizing.
  - pseut 14y ago
    You may want to check out the RePEc sites for ideas, they're for econ, so you may not have come across them. One main page is: http://ideas.repec.org http://ideas.repec.org author listings are: http://ideas.repec.org/i/eall.html http://ideas.repec.org/i/eall.html Just another possible source of ideas.