Last fall, School of Information Studies (iSchool) faculty member Daniel Acuna was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation titled “Improving grant reviewing and scientific innovation by linking funding and scholarly literature.” One of the goals of the two-year project was to research and develop a recommendation system that would aid both researchers and program officers in exploring publications and grants across certain scholarly areas.
After a year of research and development work, Acuna and his team have recently made a beta version of the recommendation tool available, and are interested in gathering feedback from scholars as they begin to use it.
Called EILEEN (Exploratory Innovator of LitEraturE Networks), Acuna believes that the recommendation engine will be useful in scoping and planning of funded research projects.
“It’s a system that will help both scientists and pre-award grant developers, essentially anyone at a college or university doing any kind of active research,” Acuna explained. “The tool helps them find similar publications and grants to what they’re proposing.”
“Currently, we’re working with datasets that include about 28 million publications and 3 million grants,” said Acuna.
The beta version of EILEEN allows researchers to establish their own profile, set their preferences, and create a library of saved searches. The system then learns from this library and recommends similar publications and grant opportunities.
“We’re hoping that the tool will allow researchers to find appropriate funding opportunities, relevant grants, and similar published research faster than they would normally be able to do,” said Acuna. “And we’d like to know what features might be missing, or if there is anything they think we can add that will help them find the funding information they’re searching for.”
Acuna will be providing a demonstration of EILEEN in an open talk, and will also discuss current and future research around the project. His talk will be held on Thursday, October 12 at 2:15 PM in Hinds Hall 347 (Katzer Room). The event is open to the campus community.
Researchers interested in trying the tool can access it at www.eileen.io, and feedback can be directed to Acuna at deacuna@syr.edu.