More than 23 proposals and 71 comments helped to shape the recent OpenSocial Gadget Contest sponsored by the Virtual Home team at UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).
The competition, administered using UCSF Open Proposals, involved sourcing new ideas for features that would help to accelerate research via research networking software products (e.g., Profiles or VIVO or other OpenSocial-enabled research networking tool). The goal was to identify good ideas, build them, and then donate these features to the research community as free open source code.
All of the winning ideas have the potential to impact research collaboration.Lesie Yuan, Director of CTSI's Virtual Home program
In the end, three winners were announced.
- Hanh Ryan UCSF): Highlight Selected Publications
- Aria Yow (UCSF): Reward a Profilee's external media presence / Q score by adding mention mapper or profilee rating
- Nick Brown (Recombinant Inc.): External collaborator tool
Ideas were submitted from 4 different academic institutions and from industry. While the initial intent was to select two winning ideas and then have the Virtual Home team implement the ideas, judges ultimately decided to designate three winners.
“All of the winning ideas were well received by the judges for their impact on research collaboration,” said Leslie Yuan, MPH, director of the Virtual Home program. “However, implementation of some ideas is going to be complex and will require research into policy implications, technologies and additionally, partnerships with external organizations.” While some of those challenges may affect implementation, Yuan noted that all of the winners submitted valuable ideas.
The contest judges included Ralph Gonzalez, MD, UCSF Professor of Medicine and director of the UCSF Program in Implementation Science; Erik Wieland, director of IT in the UCSF Department of Medicine; and Mini Kahlon, PhD, CTSI deputy director and CIO.
All proposals and comments are available via UCSF Open Proposals. More information on the winning proposals is available here.
Once created, the winning apps will be featured for download in the app library at Open Research Networking Gadgets (ORNG.info). ORNG works by linking together two popular standards:
- OpenSocial, an industry standard for writing social web applications that is supported by LinkedIn, Google, IBM, SciVerse, and others; and
- VIVO RDF, a Linked Open Data standard designed for research networking adopted by VIVO, and Profiles; and Loki, representing an ontology supported by the CTSA Consortium.
A large number of academic institutions nationwide are already using two major research networking platforms, VIVO and Profiles, and OpenSocial is part of both products. The OpenSocial Foundation is also supporting efforts to increase adoption of the OpenSocial standard within the health sciences arena.