Patent ID: 7395222
Filing Date: 2008-07-01
Classification: G06Q,G16H,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An automated method for identifying and displaying entities having expertise in one or more subjects, the method comprising: querying a database for documents relevant to a subject, the documents being indicative of expertise in one or more subject areas; calculating a first score for each relevant document based on one or more indicators of expertise in the subject; determining entities associated with each relevant document, each of the entities being associated with one or more documents in a set of documents, the entities including at least one institution, at least one author, and at least one geographic region; wherein the determining of the at least one institution associated with a relevant document includes determining from a document in the set of documents an affiliated institution of the at least one author; wherein determining a geographic region associated with a relevant document includes determining an address of an entity, the address determined at least in part on a document in the set of documents associated with the entity; calculating a second score for each entity based on the first scores of the one or more documents in the set of documents associated with each entity; calculating a third score for each of a plurality of geographic regions based on the second scores of each entity located within each geographic region; ranking expertise associated with the plurality of entities based on the second scores for each entity; ranking expertise associated with the plurality of geographic regions based on the third scores for each geographic region; hierarchically displaying to a user the ranking of expertise of the plurality of geographic regions; wherein the hierarchical displaying includes displaying a user-selectable reference to one or more entities associated with each geographic region, the user-selectable reference to one or more entities further displaying a hierarchical ranking of expertise of the one or more entities associated with the selected geographic region; wherein the displaying the ranking of expertise includes at least one of graphically or numerically depicting levels of expertise.