A researcher may have a primary, home location, e.g., UCSF Profiles, where they've taken care to make sure their profile is accurate and complete. The researcher may also have a secondary profile at another institution, at an independent research lab, at a hospital. Duplicating and keeping an extensive profile containing many publications, grants, patents, etc. would be tedious -- in fact, so tedious that few people would devote the effort.
What if there were a gadget that could be dropped onto the user's profile page that examined a primary and secondary profile and noted the differences (for a visual, think WinDiff or a source code merge tool). When clicked, the gadget could do a merge or "harmonize" the two profiles, note the desired changes, and allow the user to approve. For an empty secondary profile this would essentially be a copy operation, with the exception of links or reference types that may not be supported in common among two systems. Afterwards, this Harmonize Gadget would be used to keep profiles aligned with the fewest number of clicks.
An initial test case could be developed between Profiles, VIVO, and KNODE. KNODE discovers researcher content differently than either VIVO or Profiles. A researcher could claim their KNODE profile, then use the Harmonize Gadget to merge and align the machine generated profile in KNODE with the curated version in Profiles or VIVO. Or a claimed KNODE profile could be used via this gadget to populate a VIVO profile.
This would be based on VIVO RDF retrieved from both systems via the gadget. RDF would make the comparison of content much easier. The merge and update back to each system is probably the biggest, new technical challenge.
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It would also be interesting
It would also be interesting do discuss a similar merge / sync profiles capability with ORCID once it is launched.
What are the pros/cons of
What are the pros/cons of user-initiated synchronization, vs. a client-server model, e.g. having Knode automatically pull down RDF from Profiles or VIVO, and occasionally poll for changes? Did you imagine synchronization as being a largely one-time process, or something that users do on a regular basis?
ditto similar comment on
ditto similar comment on ORCID gadget proposal:
This sort of profile "sharing" is just getting going. So in the beginning, what I'd think to have is a uni-directional ability to upload publication lists, etc. from Profiles or VIVO up into KNODE to populate a profile claimed in that system. Or visa versa to take content listings from KNODE and download into VIVO or Profiles. Initially I'd think this would be manually initiated by the user.
As this all matures, you can imagine a more automated process -- perhaps email notifications of profile changes from one system or the other that need to be sync'd. Especially as there are machine generate content updates.
As a result of technical
As a result of technical feasibility review conducted by the Virtual Home team at CTSI, this proposal was considered beyond the technical scope for implementing it as an OpenSocial gadget. On behalf of Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCSF, thank you for participating in this contest.