Key Opinion-leader Landscape (KOL)

Identifying what papers were written by the same person and what author signatures correspond to each real-world researcher is a surprisingly difficult problem. Authors sign their names inconsistently from paper to paper, often due to journal standards. Names are also often incomplete (just surname and initials) and, of course, many people around the world have the same names or surnames. This means that there are many different author signatures that belong to the same person, and many equal signatures that belong to different people. Affiliations help, but also suffer from the same issues of inconsistency, not to mention that researchers move often. ....This problem is widespread enough that the task of solving it has a standard name (Author Disambiguation or Author Conflation, and the related Affiliation Disambiguation) and has spawned its own research subfield, a simple search finds 1360 publications on the topic. There are partial solutions to the problem, but every company performing author analytics is struggling with this challenge. This includes the likes of Elsevier, Google, Microsoft, Monocle, Facten, Scileads or Academic Labs, all of which we have personally talked to about the issue.....The intended follow-up project fits within the top sector agenda HTSM (theme ICT). Main challenges faced by this project are related to Big Data and data processing to make it’s use scalable for productization. ....Especially the disambiguation of identities inside very large data sets that are created through merging of databases is a topic that will be covered by this project. Disambiguation of data is a notoriously difficult problem that, when solved, could really help the field forward and enable innovation in various societal domains. ....This disambiguation is needed to map out therapeutic areas which Scitodate will use to determine the Key Opinion Landscape (KOL) and site landscapes. Scitodate wants to help pharma- and analytical companies to have access to the state-of-the-art technology to accelerate their market penetration, this is done by fast-track launching of new equipment by KOL mapping and providing research intelligence to equipment providers.