Research Profiles at Washington University School of Medicine

Research Profiles at Washington University School of Medicine is a publicly accessible and searchable knowledge base for exploring the expertise, research interests, and publications of the faculty, departments, institutes, and centers of Washington University in St. Louis. Profiles uses the Pure portal platform developed by Elsevier.

In addition to providing information about faculty members’ academic appointments, research interests, research output (e.g. publications), Profiles creates “scholarly fingerprints” for each faculty member with research concepts generated from a mining of publication text, abstracts, and research interest summaries.

Frequently asked questions about Research Profiles

  • Search for experts and potential collaborators here on campus through name, department, keyword, or concept.
  • View a researcher’s recent publications and article metrics such as citations, social media mentions, or Mendeley readers. New publications are added to profiles weekly as they become available in Elsevier’s Scopus database.
  • Extract information stored in Profiles for other internal uses including data warehouses, spreadsheets, reporting tools, and department and staff web pages to eliminate redundant data management.
  • Create visualizations of research collaborations among individual faculty members and departments within Washington University School of Medicine.
  • Provide a single, consistent, and accurate public-facing presence for commercial or non-profit entities to identify potential Washington University collaborators.
  • Easily visualize institutional collaborations with organizations worldwide.
  • Analyze a block of text and find researchers with related work.

Research Profiles includes approximately 2,500 faculty members from the School of Medicine. This includes faculty with the rank of instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, professor, and emeritus professor.

Research Profiles includes materials indexed in Scopus. Journal articles make up the majority of the content in Scopus, but some additional materials like books and book chapters can also be found in Scopus.

The following types of research outputs can be found in various Research Profiles pages:

  • Journal articles
  • Books and book chapters
  • Conference proceedings and presentations

If you contributed on something that is not in Scopus, and you would like us to consider it in future decisions about expanding coverage in Research Profiles, please let us know!

Request to add a publication

Gray literature is “that which is produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, but which is not controlled by commercial publishers,” as defined by the Fourth International Conference on Grey Literature in 1999.

Often, these materials aren’t included in Scopus, and thus would not be included in Research Profiles. For details about what is included in the Scopus database, see related questions:

  • Where does the information come from?
  • Why are some of my publications missing?

For more information about gray literature contact askbecker@wustl.edu.

Journal articles and books, plus some conference proceedings, are included in Research Profiles.

For details, see related questions:

  • What about gray literature?

Names, current rank, departmental appointments, titles, and contact information are populated from Washington University HRMS.

Research Profiles pages for centers and institutes at Washington University are created and updated upon request using the Request to Add a Center form.

Photographs and research interest summaries are provided with the permission and cooperation of various university groups including Washington University Physicians, Institue of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS), and the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences.

Publications and citation counts are captured from Elsevier’s Scopus database.

“Fingerprints” associated with individual and organizational unit profiles are generated by Elsevier based on data mining of information associated with text-based information found in Research Profiles like individual publications, interest statements, and organizational units like departments and divisions.

Social media mentions are provided from PlumX and Altmetric.

Social media analytics (PlumX and Altmetric) are updated daily.

Publications are updated weekly.

Citations are updated monthly.

Data from Washington University HRMS is updated semi-annually.

Centers and institutes are updated upon request using the Request to Add a Center form.

The Profiles team at Becker Library will assist you with making changes and updates to your profile. Please submit requests using the Research Profile Change Request form.

The form can be used to request changes to the following information fields:

  • Name
  • Photo
  • Publication information
  • Research interests
  • Areas of clinical interest
  • Fingerprint (only to remove concepts)
  • Lab website address

Please note that title and affiliation data are drawn directly from HRMS and cannot be changed by the Profiles team. Any recent changes to this information will be reflected in the next update we receive from HRMS. At this time these updates are received semi-annually.

Research Profiles can only list titles and roles as provided in the data received from HRMS. If you would like to include information about roles served within your affiliated organizations on your profile, please do so in the research interests section.

Fingerprint concepts can be removed from a profile if you do not wish to be found in a search for that particular term. New concepts cannot be added manually.

Request a fingerprint removal

For recent publications, it can take several weeks for new Scopus content to appear on the Research Profiles site. If it’s been over eight weeks and your article still hasn’t been added to your profile, let us know!

Research Profiles only includes publications that are indexed in Scopus (which includes all Medline-indexed content from PubMed). Journal articles make up the majority of the content in Scopus, but some book chapters and conference materials are included as well. If your article has not been indexed in Scopus, we are not able to add it to your profile at this time. If you contributed on something that is not in Scopus, and you would like us to consider it in future decisions about expanding coverage in Research Profiles, please request to add a publication.

For details about what is included in the Scopus database, see related questions:

  • Where does the information come from?
  • What about gray literature?

If your article is indexed in Scopus but is not appearing in your profile, please let us know by submitting the citation information via the request form.

Request to add a publication

Research Profiles at Washington University School of Medicine is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the School of Medicine, Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research, and the Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS). Becker Library is working on the implementation and data population for Profiles in addition to providing demonstrations, answering questions, and gathering feedback to help determine whether to adopt the platform beyond the pilot period.

Contact us if you have other questions