1. Data Mining for Expertise: Using Scopus to Create Lists of Experts for U.S. Department of Education Discretionary Grant Programs
Good afternoon, my name is George Diez; I am a reference librarian at the National Library of Education.
This presentation will demonstrate in 3 easy steps how we create lists of experts, utilizing out-of-the-box information visualization features of a bibliographic database (Scopus) to create expert lists.
We use these expert lists to support discretionary grant programs at the US Department of Education, by providing a product that helps US Department of Education grant program officers identify potential expert reviewers for their grant applications.
You might have other uses for expert lists, such as for finding experts for an expert panel, or in other situations where experts are needed.
George Diez, Reference Librarian
National Library of Education

2. The National Library of Education is one of the four national libraries
Part of the Dept. of Education, Institute of Education Sciences (IES)
Serves as the federal government's primary education information resource to agency staff, the public, education community, and other government agencies
The National Library of Education is one of four U.S. national libraries.
We are part of the U.S. Department of Education, within the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

3. Library Services Supporting the Discretionary Grant Life Cycle
Lists of researchers and practitioners as potential reviewers
Full text of articles referenced as evidence
Alerts on current activities of awardee organizations
Searches of research and practitioner literature
Tables of contents of current journals
Full-text articles
Searches for published research from grants or contracts funded by ED
Searches for published research about ED grant programs
Citation analysis
4. Close out
1. Notice development
2. Application or proposal review
3. Monitor
Library services
Library services
Discretionary grants at the US Department of Education are awarded on the basis of a competitive review process.
Discretionary grant programs recruit and secure the services of highly-qualified reviewers to review grant applications.
Our library supports the recruitment process by providing discretionary grant programs with listings of potential reviewers; Step 2 in this graphic.
I invite you to consider how these expert lists can be useful within the particular context of your organization.

4. The Request: “Help us find reviewers for our program’s grant proposals
Use Scopus to answer this question.
The request for this information typically comes to us in the form of a question like this.
We use the bibliographic database Scopus for responding to questions like these.

5. Using Scopus to Find Potential Grant Application Reviewers
Authors of peer-reviewed articles typically have expertise on the topics they write about; thus are potentially qualified reviewers.
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature.
Scopus content includes useful information on authors and their publications, which helps grant programs evaluate their qualifications as reviewers.
Scopus is a large abstract and citation database of peer reviewed literature in physical sciences, health sciences, life sciences, and the social sciences and humanities.
Scopus provides analytical information on the authors and their publications, which helps in evaluating the authors’ qualifications as reviewers.

6. An Example:
A discretionary grant program within the U.S. Department of Education needs to identify experts on high school reform for recruiting highly-qualified reviewers of applications for its high school reform grants.
Here is a specific example- The staff of a US Department of Education discretionary grant program needs to identify experts on high school reform for recruiting highly qualified reviewers for its high school reform grants.

7. Step 1- Perform the Scopus search:
Search string: TITLE-ABS-KEY ( "high school*" OR "secondary school*" ) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ( reform OR turnaround OR restructur*) AND PUBYEAR > 2006
Include all subject areas
For the first step, we conduct a database search in order to get a listing of results that are relevant to our topic.
We search the Title/Abstract/Keyword fields for terms related to “high school” and “reform.”
We limit the results to the last 10 years, and we include all subject areas.

8. Step Two- Limit the results:
The initial search for articles on high school reform produced several thousand results.
We used the faceted breakdown of the search results to limit the results to a manageable number.
Facets include year, author name, subject area, document type, source title, keyword, affiliation, country/territory, source type, and language.
Alternatively, the results could be limited by selecting from the top of the results list when the results are sorted by relevance.
Because our topic is relatively broad, the initial search produced several thousand results.
We used the faceted breakdown of the search results to limit the results to a manageable number and to focus on the most relevant results.

9. Limiting the Initial Results with Facets:
Limit by Country/Territory
Limit by authors with multiple publications
These screen shots show how you can limit the search results by country, and by authors with multiple publications.
The number of publications shown for each author are those which match the criteria of the search, not the author’s total publications, making this facet especially relevant for our purpose.

10. Limiting by authors with multiple publications:
Limit the results list to a manageable number
Assumes authors with more publications on a topic generally have more impact than those with fewer
The number next to the authors’ names are the number of the author’s publications that match the search criteria (not necessarily the entire number of papers the author has published)
When we limit the search results to multiple publications, we are assuming that authors who publish multiple articles on a topic will generally tend to have a greater degree of expertise on that topic, and thus might be more qualified as expert reviewers.

11. Step Three- Find Detailed Author Information by Clicking on the Author’s Name:
The third step entails getting detailed information on the author by clicking on the author’s name in the bibliographic citation.
This information about the author can help our grants officers make decisions about the author’s qualifications for reviewing grant applications.

12. Author Details page:
The Author Details page has information on the author’s publications, institutional affiliation, co-authors.
The author details page includes the author’s institutional affiliation, analysis of the author’s output, and information on the author’s co-authors.

13. Author Output:
The Author Output section includes cites the author has received, the titles of journals in which the author published, the topical domains of those journals, the author’s h-index , analysis of publications citing the author, and listings of the co-authors.
The h-index is an index that attempts to measure the number of highly impactful papers an author has published. The index is based on the set of the author's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
The product we provide to our library customers includes a link to an analysis of the author’s output.
This includes the titles of journals in which the author has published, the topical domains of those journals, the author’s h-index , analysis of publications citing the author, and information on the co-authors.
The h-index is an effort to measure the number of highly impactful papers an author has published. This indicator can help as a component part of the overall analysis of the author.
The way the h-index is calculated is- if you have one paper cited at least once, the h-index is 1. If you have two papers cited at least twice, the h-index is 2. If you have three papers cited at least three times, the h-index is 3, etc.

14. Analyzing the author’s output- journals:
See the journals in which the author has published.
This is the tab on the author output analysis screen which shows the breakdown of the author’s publications by the titles of the journals in which they were published.
Our discretionary grant program officers can see if the author has published in prestigious journals.

15. Analyzing the author’s output- topics:
Topical domains of the journals in which the author has published.
They can also see the subject areas of the journals in which the author has published.

16. Link to Information on Co-Authors:
Co-authors are also potential reviewer candidates!
On the Author Details Page, click on Co-authors, or on the Co-authors tab.
Then, click on the link “View co-author overview.” That’s the page you need to link to.
Our library product also provides a direct link to the information on the articles’ co-authors.
Co-authors are also a potential source for finding expert reviewers.

17. Co-authors: The co-author link
Here is the link we provide to the co-author information.

18. The Co-Authors Page:
Links to detailed information about the co-author, the co-authored publications, and to the co-author’s total publications.
This is the co-authors page
By drilling down on the co-author’s name, you can get similar analyses of the co-author’s output, which includes the journals and the topical domains in which the co-author has published, the co-author’s h-index , and information on publications citing the co-author.

19. Step 4: Author contact information:
Find by doing a web search on the author’s name and institutional affiliation.
In most cases the author will have a page on his institutional website
Other sources: CVs and staff directories
Our library’s product includes contact information for the author, in case our grant program officers want to contact the author.
We get this information by doing an open-web (Google) search, usually on the author’s name and institutional affiliation.
In most cases we find that the author has a page on the affiliated institution’s website; sometimes we find the author’s CV, or their listing within their institution’s staff directory.

20. Key elements of the final product:
Author name, affiliation
Author contact information
Analysis of author scholarly output
Co-authors
To recap once again, these are the elements of the final product we delver to U.S. Department of Education program officers looking for expert reviewers for competitive grant applications.
The elements include, the author’s name, institutional affiliation, contact information, analysis of scholarly output, and similar such information on the co-authors.

21. Final product:
This is what the final product looks like.

22. Thank You!
And once again, my name is George Diez, I am a reference librarian at the National Library of Education, and I thank you for listening to this description of how the National Library of Education leverages the Scopus database to support competitive grant programs at the U.S. Department of Education.