Researchers Receive Credit for Their Scientific Contributions

ResearchCrossroads launches Social Network of Research to leverage the power of the scientific community to improve the accuracy of publicly funded research grants.

The National Institutes of Health and other funding organizations may report just the Principal Investigator on their research grants - essentially giving the credit to a single researcher

Often it is a case of the 'rich get richer' in research because the Principal Investigator on a grant receives the bulk of the credit, which could result in additional funding

Research is a collaborative environment and those that participated deserve to be recognized.

San Mateo, CA (PRWEB) June 2, 2008 -- ResearchCrossroads today announced enhancements to their popular ResearchCrossroads.com website that leverages the power of social networking to allow researchers to take credit for their research and improve the accuracy of publicly funded research.

"The National Institutes of Health and other funding organizations may report just the Principal Investigator on their research grants - essentially giving the credit to a single researcher," says Kyle Brown, CEO of ResearchCrossroads. Often there are teams of researchers that participated and remain primarily anonymous. ResearchCrossroads allows these individuals to associate grants with their on-line profile, giving them credit while providing information that allows funding organizations to better understand who is performing publicly funded research.

Because no unique identifier exists for an individual researcher, like a social security number uniquely identifies a taxpayer, grants and publications are often matched to researchers by name and organization. This method of attributing credit is error-prone. With an individual researcher receiving grants from multiple funding agencies, each with their own internal identifier, it is nearly impossible to exactly match information to an individual. Creating a 'MySpace for Research' allows the research community to help determine who was involved in specific research.

Other organizations have attempted to attribute research to individuals using publication data. However, publications can lag the actual research by years where grants are awarded on an on-going basis, making the information timelier. Publication data is also typically focused on the medical research community. The ResearchCrossroads network extends beyond disease research to include other scientific disciplines like physics, computer science, even polar exploration and astronomy.

"Often it is a case of the 'rich get richer' in research because the Principal Investigator on a grant receives the bulk of the credit, which could result in additional funding," continues Brown. "Research is a collaborative environment and those that participated deserve to be recognized."

About ResearchCrossroads:
ResearchCrossroads has aggregated millions of grants into a single database to create research portfolios for hundreds of thousands of researchers and organizations, providing a means to better understand research funding.

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