Melville, NY, September 9, 2009 — Researchers in the physical sciences now have a new tool for communicating with colleagues, identifying potential collaborators, and keeping up with competitors.
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) today unveiled the launch edition of its pioneering new website, AIP UniPHY — a first-of-its-kind scientific networking platform for physical scientists. Through AIP's partnership in this venture with Collexis Holdings, Inc., a leading developer of semantic technology and knowledge discovery software, the site will continue to evolve and develop.
AIP UniPHY is the world's first literature-based, professional scientific networking platform that allows physical scientists to identify and connect directly with individuals whose expertise they may need in future collaborations. Utilizing Collexis's proprietary Fingerprint technology, AIP UniPHY enables fast and accurate knowledge retrieval and allows individuals to search for and locate documents, researchers, trends, and new discoveries more quickly, precisely, and thoroughly than ever before.
A unique feature of AIP UniPHY is the profiling of individual scientists based on their publication history. "By providing pre-populated profiles" said John Haynes, AIP's Vice President, Publishing, "we hope to facilitate the process by which researchers connect and share data. We expect that this will both increase the number of significant breakthroughs made across a range of disciplines, and decrease the time it takes to bring these innovations about."
AIP UniPHY enables researchers to see the networks that connect more than 180,000 physical scientists from more than 100 countries. They will discover the research each of these individuals has conducted and follow a web of connections showing each co-author with whom the investigator has worked. AIP UniPHY reveals with whom each of these co-authors has collaborated, as well.
"AIPUniPHY.org further demonstrates how the Collexis proprietary Fingerprinting technology can be applied in any scientific discipline," states Bill Kirkland, CEO of Collexis. "We are looking forward to working with AIP on the expansion of the AIP UniPHY network as well as working with their affiliated publisher partners so that they too will be able to provide their respective communities with this very innovative professional network platform."
"There's no doubt that advances in communications technology have made the Earth "flatter" by helping to eliminate the physical boundaries to collaboration in the sciences," said Tim Ingoldsby, AIP's Director of Strategic Initiatives. "AIP UniPHY contributes to this phenomenon in a novel way that greatly helps to foster constructive research alliances among scientists across the globe. As this service progresses, Collexis and AIP will be adding tools and data that further enhance scientific collaboration."