Abstract:
A system for sharing academic articles and credential information for a plurality of academic users is described herein. Embodiments of the system, computer program product and computer-implemented method perform a process for gathering data related to the academic user and a process for determining a reputation ranking for the academic user by executing the steps of: creating a user profile for the academic user from attribute information gathered from a user profile prompt, enabling the user profile from the academic user to be viewed by academic and non-academic users and selected for ranking by other academic users, enabling the other academic users to provide a rank selection for the user profile for the academic user according to at least one of research quality, credentials, research articles, and user activity, and determining a reputation ranking for the user profile from the rank selection of the other academic users.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0001]    The following invention relates generally to a system for sharing user profiles, and more specifically to a system for searching and sharing user profiles for a plurality of users, such as academic users, e.g., professors, researchers, research clinicians, scientists, etc, and ranking the users for contribution quality and reputation. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0002]    Currently, there are several social networking sites that allow users to post profiles and content to an online forum, e.g., art work, writing, clippings, photos, etc. However, most of these websites are available for the general public to join, making it difficult to locate relevant user profiles and information, screen service providers and others from the network, and control quality of the postings. Some sites have sought to alleviate the screening and location issues by establishing groups within the social networking site and restricting access for complaints about users that contact people outside their group without prior contact. These methods generally fail in an academic context, however, because a general user may join a group to search for researchers to pose a question to, e.g., an academic researching a new cancer drug, making the site burdensome to researchers in the field. Some sites also attempt to restrict profile searching to people who have similar educational backgrounds, professional backgrounds etc., but such searches may not locate academics in similar research fields from different institutions. 
         [0003]    Conventional social networking sites also have issues when it comes to evaluating the quality of profiles and user content. Some sites attempt to alleviate the quality issue by allowing site users to provide positive or negative feedback regarding a particular user, e.g., to “like”, to up vote, or to post comments related to the content or user. Unfortunately, this method of user evaluation has serious drawbacks for academic content. For example, there is no way to measure the quality of the user feedback for a particular user, so if content is highly technical or has a limited audience, the feedback may not be an accurate indicator of content quality, or worse, it may be offensive. 
         [0004]    A need exists for a method and system that solves the issues identified above. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0005]    One embodiment of the invention is a system for sharing academic user profiles, research articles and credential information for a plurality of academic users. The system comprises a computer having a tangible, non-transitory computer memory, with the non-transitory memory having stored thereon a plurality of computer instructions to perform a process for gathering data related to an academic user and a process for determining a reputation ranking for the academic user. The computer instructions in such an exemplary embodiment execute the steps of creating a user profile for the academic user from attribute information gathered from a user profile prompt displayed on a user computer associated with the academic user, enabling the user profile from the academic user to be viewed by other academic users and a plurality of non-academic users and selected for ranking by other academic users on other user computers associated with the other academic users, enabling the other academic users to provide a rank selection for the user profile for the academic user according to at least one of research quality, credentials, research articles, and user activity, and determining a reputation ranking for the user profile from the rank selections. 
         [0006]    Another embodiment of the invention is a computer program product comprised of a series of instructions executable on a computer for performing a process for gathering data related to the academic user and a process for determining a reputation ranking from the academic user. In some embodiments, the computer program product executes the steps of: creating a user profile for the academic user from attribute information gathered from a user profile prompt displayed on a computer display associated with the academic user, enabling the user profile from the academic user to be viewed and selected by other academic users, enabling the other academic user to provide a rank selection for the user profile for the academic user according to at least one of reputation ranking, academic credentials, publication volume, and user activity, and determining a reputation ranking for the user profile from the rank selection of the rank selection. 
         [0007]    Another embodiment of the invention is a computer-implemented method comprised of a series of instructions that cause a computer to perform a process for gathering data related to a plurality of academic users and a process for determining a reputation ranking for an academic user. In some embodiments, the method includes the steps of: creating a user profile for the academic user from attribute information gathered from a user profile prompt displayed on a user computer associated with the academic user, enabling the user profile from the academic user to be viewed by other academic users and a plurality of non-academic users and selected for ranking by other academic users on other user computers associated with the other academic users, enabling the other academic users to provide a rank selection for the user profile for the academic user according to at least one of research quality, credentials, research articles, and user activity, and determining a reputation ranking for the user profile from the rank selections. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0008]    So that the features and advantages of the invention may be understood in more detail, a more particular description of the invention briefly summarized above may be had by reference to the appended drawings, which form a part of this specification. It is to be noted, however, that the drawings illustrate only various embodiments of the invention and are therefore not to be considered limiting of the invention&#39;s scope as it may include other effective embodiments as well. 
           [0009]      FIG. 1  is a network diagram of an academic user profile system including user computers, a communications network and aggregator computer according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0010]      FIG. 2  is an electronic block diagram of an aggregator computer for providing access to the academic user profiles of academic users of the system according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0011]      FIG. 3  is a software block diagram of an aggregator computer for providing access to the academic user profiles of academic users, the aggregator computer having a program product in memory thereon including several operation modules according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0012]      FIG. 4A  is a software flow diagram for assigning a reputation ranking to a plurality of user profiles associated with academic users according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0013]      FIG. 4B  is a software flow diagram for obtaining user profile information from an academic user according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0014]      FIG. 4C  is a software flow diagram for enabling communication between system users based upon whether or not the system is an academic user or non-academic user, which can be implemented as a loop in some embodiments of the invention; 
           [0015]      FIG. 5  is a system database diagram for data stored in the memory of an aggregator computer according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0016]      FIG. 6A  is a graphical user interface (“GUI”) displaying an academic user profile according to an embodiment of the present invention; 
           [0017]      FIG. 6B  is a GUI displaying a reputation score according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0018]      FIG. 6C  is a GUI displaying a question and a series of user comments according to an embodiment of the invention; 
           [0019]      FIG. 6D  is a GUI displaying a research article abstract according to an embodiment of the invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0020]    To address the need set forth above, according to one aspect, the invention includes a communications network interface, e.g., a web server and firewall, for interacting with a plurality of academic and non academic users, a database for storing academic user profile data, and an aggregator computer for implementing the functionality of some embodiments of the instant invention. As used herein, the term “academic user” refers to users that engage in academic and/or research activities at, e.g., universities, colleges, research institutions, companies, etc., and the term “academic user profile” refers to the profiles of such persons. The term “non-academic user”, as used herein, refers to users that are not “academic users” as described above. 
         [0021]    More specifically, as can be seen in  FIG. 1 , the academic user profile shared network site  100  of the instant invention includes user computers  102  associated with users  101 , a communications network  104 , and an aggregator computer  106  connected to database  108 . As one skilled in the art will appreciate, user computers  101  can be any type of computing device, e.g. a desktop, laptop, PDA, smartphone, computer tablet, networked computer display, as well as any other electronic device capable of connecting to the communications network  104  and receiving data from same to enable system interaction with user  101 . As one skilled in the art will also appreciate, users  101  may include academic and non-academic users, though in some embodiments non-academic users may have limited access to the system, e.g., non-academic users may only be able to search academic user profiles or may have limited commenting and posting options. 
         [0022]    As previously mentioned, the user computers  102  are connected to the aggregator computer  106  via communications network  104 , which may be a single communications network or comprised of several different communications networks. As such, communications network  104  can be a public or private network, which can be e.g., any combination of the internet and intranet systems, that allow a plurality of system users to access the academic profile data. For example, communications network  104  can connect all of the system components using the internet, a local area network (“LAN”), e.g., ethernet or WI-FI, or wide area network (“WAN”), e.g., LAN to LAN via internet tunneling, or a combination thereof, and using electrical cable e.g., HomePNA or power line communication, optical fiber, and radio waves, e.g., wireless LAN, to transmit data. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, in some embodiments, user computers  102  may be networked together using a LAN for a university, home, apartment building, etc., but may be connected to the aggregator computer  104  via an internet tunneling to implement a WAN. In other instances, all of the user computers  102  and the aggregator computer  106  may connect using the internet. Still in other implementations, a user may connect to the aggregator using, e.g., wireless LAN and the internet. Moreover, the term “communications network” is not limited to a single communications network system, but may also refer to separate, individual communications networks used to connect the user computers  102  to aggregator computer  106 . Accordingly, though each of the user computers  102  and aggregator computer  106  are depicted as connected to a single communications network, such as the internet, an implementation of the communications network  104  using a combination of communications networks is within the scope of the invention. 
         [0023]    As one skilled in the art will appreciate, the communications network interfaces with aggregator computer  106 , preferably via a firewall (not shown) and web server (not shown) to provide a secure access point for users  101  and to prevent users  101  from accessing the various protected databases in the system. In some embodiments, the firewall may be a network layer firewall i.e., packet filters, application level firewalls, or proxy servers. In other words, in some embodiments, a packet filter firewall can be used to block traffic from particular source IP addresses, source ports, destination IP addresses or ports, or destination service like www or FTP, though a packet filter in this instance would most likely block certain source IP addresses. In other embodiments, an application layer firewall may be used to intercept all packets traveling to or from the system, and may be used to prevent certain users, i.e., users restricted or blocked from system access, from accessing the system. Still, in other embodiments, a proxy server may act as a firewall by responding to some input packets and blocking other packets. 
         [0024]    Returning to the figures, database  108  communicates with and uploads data to the user computers via the aggregator computer  106  and communications network  104 . As such, database  108  may be, for example, one or more computers, file servers or database servers implemented as network attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SAN), or direct access storage (DAS), or any combination thereof or of other systems, comprising, e.g., multiple hard disk drives. In some embodiments, the file servers or database servers defining the database  108  may also allow various user computers  102  to directly access, and display data stored thereon. Moreover, each of these file servers or database servers may allow users to upload data to the database. For example, an academic user may upload a photograph, a Curriculum Vitae (“CV”), academic article, and/or raw or processed research data, post blog entries, ask questions, post research updates, etc, to be stored in, e.g., separate file servers or the same file server, in a plurality of databases, tables, or fields in separate portions of the file server memory. Accordingly, as is known in the art, the computer implementing database  108  may have stored thereon database management system, e.g., a set of software programs that controls the organization, storage, management, and retrieval of data in the databases. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, in some embodiments, database  108  may be stored in the aggregator computer memory (to be discussed below). As one skilled in the art will also appreciate, though database  108  is depicted connected to, or as a part of, the aggregator computer  106 , not the communications network  104 , the database  108  may be, e.g., remote storage or connected to the aggregator computer  106  via a privately networked system. 
         [0025]    An aggregator computer  106  will now be described with reference to  FIG. 2 . As one skilled in the art will appreciate, aggregator computer  106  can be any type of computer, e.g., an application server, or a plurality of computers, comprising a memory  206 , a program product  208 , a processor  204  and an input/output device (“I/O device”)  202 . I/O device  202  connects the aggregator computer  106  to a signal from the communications network  104 , and can be any I/O device including, but not limited to a network card/controller connected by a PCI bus to the motherboard, or hardware built into the motherboard to connect the aggregator computer  106  to various file servers or database servers implementing database  108 . 
         [0026]    As can be seen, the I/O device  202  is connected to the processor  204 . Processor  204  is the “brains” of the aggregator computer  106 , and as such executes program product  208  and works in conjunction with the I/O device  202  to direct data to memory  206  and to send data from memory  206  to the various file servers and communications network. Processor  204  can be, e.g., any commercially available processor, or plurality of processors, adapted for use in an aggregator computer  106 , e.g., Intel® Xeon® multicore processors, Intel® micro-architecture Nehalem, AMD Opteron™ multicore processors, etc. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, processor  204  may also include components that allow the aggregator computer  106  to be connected to a display [not shown] and keyboard that would allow, for example, an administrative user direct access to the processor  204  and memory  206 . 
         [0027]    Memory  206  may store the algorithms forming the computer instructions of the instant invention and data, and such memory  206  may consist of both non-volatile memory, e.g., hard disks, flash memory, optical disks, and the like, and volatile memory, e.g., SRAM, DRAM, SDRAM, etc., as required by embodiments of the instant invention. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, though memory  206  is depicted on, e.g., the motherboard, of the aggregator computer  106 , memory  206  may also be a separate component or device, e.g., FLASH memory or other storage, connected to the aggregator computer  106 . 
         [0028]    As shown in  FIGS. 2 and 3 , an embodiment for computer instructions implementing some of the functionality of the instant invention is stored in memory  206 , e.g., as a plurality of programming modules. One module, the profile module  302 , in some embodiments consists of computer instructions for gathering data from an academic user, including, e.g., researchers, scientists, academics, etc., regardless of whether the academic user is employed by an academic or research institution, to create a user profile for viewing by other system users. The user profile module may obtain from the academic user information such as the academic user&#39;s name, address, area of research, academic or research institution in which the user is working, CV, photo, academic articles, etc. The profile module then uses the data to format and create a user profile for the academic user. While in some embodiments, all academic users may have a standard profile format, e.g., color, picture location, CV location, etc., in other embodiments, the user profile module may also allow the academic user to personalize his/her user profile by adding color, changing font and text size, moving locations for pictures, CV, articles, blog posts, etc. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, though some searching and comment functionality may be enabled by the computer instructions for all system users, in a preferred embodiment the academic user profile module is only used by academic users, i.e., only academic user profiles are stored in the database and available for user viewing. 
         [0029]    Another module, the user comment module  304 , consists of a computer process to enable a plurality of academic users and non-academic users to comment on academic user profiles. For example, an academic user may be able to comment on other academic user profiles, peer papers, research activity, reputation ranking, profile or blog posts, or respond to comments posted on the academic user&#39;s profile. In some embodiments, all users, including non-academic users, may be able to comment on, e.g., academic user profiles, research activity, academic article, blog posts, reputation rankings, etc. In other embodiments, non-academic users may be restricted from commenting on the above. Still in other embodiments, academic users that are classified as students may have a separate space in the user comment module to advise other students on the quality of an academic user as a professor, advisor, etc. The user comment module  304  may also include links to “like”, up vote, link to postings on an academic user&#39;s profile or to an academic user profile, and follow an academic user profile. In some embodiments, the user comment module may also allow a user to reference postings, e.g., by providing a cut and paste function and/or a citing function to the article posted on an academic user&#39;s profile. 
         [0030]    Returning to  FIG. 3 , the profile rank module  306  includes processes to rank academic user profiles so that each profile includes a reputation rating. In some embodiments, ranking academic user profiles is restricted to academic users, who rank the academic user profiles according to e.g., the academic user&#39;s CV, reputation, blog activity, comment activity, research quality, professional experience with the academic user, and the quality of the academic user&#39;s academic publications. In some embodiments, the ranking of an academic user by another academic user is weighted according to the ranking academic user&#39;s reputation rating. Still in other embodiments, a reputation ranking may be more or less influenced by student academic user rankings, e.g., students&#39; rankings are given a heavier weight than non-student rankings. In this way, the reputation rating on academic user profiles can more accurately reflect the reliability of an academic user&#39;s content, the quality of an academic user&#39;s teaching, and/or the quality of the academic user&#39;s research. 
         [0031]    An exemplary embodiment of the computer program flow for processes implementing the profile module  302 , user comment module  304  and profile rank module  306  will now be discussed with reference to  FIGS. 4A-4C . As one skilled in the art will appreciate, through the flow diagrams are shown as implemented in a serial configuration, such flow is for simplicity only and should be understood to include various loops and process that may be run concurrently and/or used to implement each of the instructions, or a plurality of the instruction, therein. To implement the profile rank module  306 , in step  402 , the process “starts” or is called by the computer program/instructions. In step  404 , a rank selection provided by an academic user is assigned a ranking weight based upon at least one of the academic user&#39;s reputation ranking, academic credentials, publication volume, and user activity. In the next step,  406 , the reputation selection of the academic user is multiplied by the ranking weight to create a weighted reputation selection. In step  408 , the weighted reputation selection is averaged with the user&#39;s reputation ranking to create a new reputation ranking. In step  408 , the new reputation ranking is published on the user profile. And, in step  412 , the process ends. 
         [0032]    Various formula may be used by the profile rank module  306  to perform the steps above. For example, the reputation rating for an academic user may be a combination of an interactive score and traffic score, where for the interactive score:
       N is a number of users   T is a set of claimed types   C t,j,i  is a value of claim type t between user i and user j   w t  is a weight of the claim type t, where Σ tεT w t =1   c=0.1—a dumping factor   S=5 is a smoothing factor   Matrix:       
 
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         [0049]    As one skilled in the art will appreciate, other steps may be added to those described above to implement other features of the profile rank module, e.g., an instruction to determine whether an academic user is a student user and assigning a ranking weight accordingly or providing a second ranking for teaching quality. Accordingly, though not all such instructions are described herein, all variations in implementation should be considered within the scope of the invention. 
         [0050]    An exemplary embodiment of the computer program flow for processes implementing the user profile module  302  is described with reference to  FIG. 4B . In step  416 , the process “starts” or is called by the computer program. In step  416 , a user profile prompt is provided to, e.g., an academic user, which includes a user name field, CV upload option, education information field, research information field, academic institution or research organization field, photo upload option, academic recommendation upload option, and/or academic paper upload option. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, the preceding list of user profile options is exemplary, in some embodiments, the user profile module may also include options to set the user&#39;s password and login id, email preferences, contacts, search history log, etc. In some embodiments, the user profile may also include the option to restrict certain areas of the profile to individuals or groups, e.g., to make a research article viewable to the research team or peer review group prior to publication. In other embodiments, the instructions may include determining whether or not the user is an academic user or non-academic user, and providing user profile prompts accordingly. For example, an academic user may be provided a profile prompt that allows the academic user to create an academic profile that can be searched by other users, but the non-academic user is restricted to the creation of only a login id and password. Once the user profile is obtained from the user, the data may be downloaded into the database, e.g., a database for profiles that are pending verification in step  418 . In such embodiments, the user profile may be verified, e.g., to determine whether the user is found in the directory of academic or research users, confirmed by a colleague, etc. In other embodiments, academic users may only be able to create profiles if they have been recommended to the system, which would make the verification process unnecessary, and in some other embodiments, a combination of user recommendation and verification may be used as quality control for the academic profile. If verification is part of the download process, in some embodiments, the user may be able to supply limited information until the user is verified as an academic user, e.g., the user may not have the option to upload papers, research, photos, links, etc, to reduce the amount of data held in the pending database. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, once the user profile is verified, the data from the profile is stored in appropriate databases, tables, etc., e.g., a separate database or table for photos, research papers, academic institution information, user comments and blog posts, research, etc, to be discussed further below. And, in step  420 , the data for various tables is used to assemble the user profile page, which may also be stored in a separate database or table. As can be seen, the process ends in step  422 . As one skilled in the art will appreciate, other computer program steps may be added to those described above to implement other features, e.g., separate prompts for user login id and password creation and user profile information. Accordingly, though not all such instructions are described herein, all variations in implementation should be considered within the scope of the invention. 
         [0051]    Returning to the figures, the computer program flow for processes comprising the user communications module  304  will be described with reference to  FIG. 4C . In step  424 , the process starts by enabling communications links on the user profile page, e.g., options to “like” an academic profile, to “one up” an academic profile, to copy an academic profile, to follow an academic profile, to follow a research field, to comment on the user profile, and/or in some embodiments for the “owner” of the academic profile to post blog entries or respond to other user comments. Once a comment is received, the particular type of comment is stored in the database in step  428 . For example, the likes, links, followers, and comments may be stored in the same database in different tables, columns or fields, or may be stored in different databases depending upon the type of content, content size, etc. Academic users are also given the option on the user profile page to comment on articles and link to email addresses for academic users, in step  430 . Though shown in series with the previous steps, one skilled in the art will appreciate that the email communication and research article comment options in step  430  may be a parallel process to those above, or for academic users, included as part of the initial profile view page in step  426 , i.e., those options are available when a user is identified as an academic user at log in. In step  432 , any comments added to a research article are stored in the database. In some embodiments, where the group of users that can see an article or portion of the profile are restricted, the database may stored such comments in separate tables or fields, or in the same table as comments for unrestricted portions with an identifier indicating that the comment is for restricted viewing. In step  434 , unrestricted comments are posted on the academic user profile or research paper pages for the academic user, e.g., a comment may be posted with the poster&#39;s picture and username. In some embodiments, step  434  may also include instructions to post a copy of the comments provided to academic user profiles on the poster&#39;s academic user profile. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, because non-academic users cannot upload photos in some embodiments, even in unrestricted portions of the shared networking site, academic users and non-academic users can be readily distinguished. In step  436 , the processes end. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, other computer program steps may be added to those described above to implement other features, the commenting module may allow the user to link to accounts associated with Twitter®, Linkedin® or Facebook®, or allow a user various methods of voting or approving an academic profile or research paper, etc, other than the ones described above. Accordingly, though not all such instructions are described herein, all variations in implementation should be considered within the scope of the invention. 
         [0052]    Turning to  FIG. 5 , an exemplary database  500 , is organized into several tables for each of the steps described in  FIGS. 4A-4C , including, for example, a security table  502 , a user information table  504 , a profile table  506 , a research table  508 , an academic institution table  510 , a CV or resume table  512 , a photo table  514 , a academic research paper table  516 , a comment table  518 , and a pending table  520 . In an exemplary embodiment, security table  502  may include, e.g., a user identifier (“user ID”) as the primary key, and a password and user type stored as separate rows in the table. For the user information table  504 , the primary key is the user ID and the rows may be defined, e.g., as the user name, physical address, email address, university or research institution affiliate, and educational level of the student member, e.g., MD, PhD, MS, MA, BS, student, etc, educational background (undergraduate, graduate, post doctoral, etc.). For the profile table  506 , the primary key is the user ID, and the rows are defined by the reputation rank of the user profile and the rating weight, i.e., the number used to determine the weight to assign to an academic user&#39;s ranking of other academic users. In research table  508 , the primary key may be defined by the user ID, with the rows identifying the subject, title, publication date, and author/author(s) associated with the research article. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, the research table  508  stores bibliographic information regarding the research article, while table  516  (discussed below) may be used to store the research article. 
         [0053]    Returning to  FIG. 5 , academic institution table  510  may be used to store information regarding the academic users current school or employer, and may include the user ID as a primary key and the institution name, address, position, tenure, date employed or entered the institution, etc. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, though not depicted in the figures, either the academic institution table  510 , or a table similar to academic institution table  510 , may be used to store information regarding the educational institutions the academic user attended. In resume/CV table  512 , the academic user&#39;s CV is stored, and as such the table includes the user ID as a primary key and the CV is included as rows in the table. Similarly, photo table  514  and academic table  516  are organized using the user ID as a primary key, and the storing photos or articles in the rows of the respective tables. In comment table  518 , the primary key is also the user ID, but the rows include all types of comments, e.g., paper comments, profile comments, likes, links, blog posts, etc. Finally, in pending column  520 , all pending profiles are loaded for approval and/or verification, and as such include the user ID as the primary key and the profile prompt as the row, e.g., the data entered to determine whether a user can create an academic profile or not. 
         [0054]    As one skilled in the art will appreciate, each of the relational tables may be used to construct GUIs as described for the program product above that allow a user to interact with the computer program of the instant invention, and exemplary GUIs and their functions will be described with reference to  FIGS. 6A-6D . 
         [0055]      FIG. 6A  is a graphical user interface (“GUI”) displaying an academic user profile according to an embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, the academic user profile GUI  600  includes a RG score tab  602 , which stores the academic users reputation score; the published article summary and link  604 , which stores, e.g., the article abstract and link to full article for viewing; questions posed to the academic user and the associated answers  606 , which can be expanded to view multiple comment entries; an activity summary  608 , which includes the number of full text articles available, the amount of published data, and questions posed to and answered by the academic users, a link to follow the academic profile  610 , which includes the number of followers an academic user has and the number of users following the academic user; an email tab  612 , which enables the academic user to email other system users; a home tab  614 , which allows an academic user to return to the system home page or, e.g., the academic users own profile; a settings tab  616 , which allows the user to change system preferences, e.g., color, photos, username, password, etc; a search prompt  618 , which enables a user to search for academic users; an info tab  620 , which includes biographic information about the academic profile, e.g., name, address, research field, research institution, undergraduate, graduate and PhD. institutions, etc.; a profile picture, name and institution  622 ; and a short biographic summary  624  about the academic user and academic user profile. In some embodiments, the academic user&#39;s photo, name and institution  622 , reputation score tab  602 , followers tab  610 , email tab  612 , home tab  614 , settings tab  616  and search prompt  618  can be maintained in one or more profile ribbons  601  at the top of the GUI to be replicated through other GUIs in the system. 
         [0056]      FIG. 6B  is a reputation score GUI  603  displaying a reputation score according to an embodiment of the invention. As can be seen, in some embodiments, the reputation score tab  602  expands into the reputation score GUI  603 . The reputation score GUI  603  includes a reputation score  625 , which may also include an explanation for the reputation score; a percentile rank  626  for the academic user, e.g., the percentage of reputation ratings that the academic profile user&#39;s rating exceeds, and a graphic showing the academic user&#39;s reputation score over time  628 . As one skilled in the art will appreciate, the profile ribbon  601  can be maintained over the reputation score GUI  603 . 
         [0057]      FIG. 6C  is a question GUI  607  that includes a question and a series of user comments according to an embodiment of the invention. In the question GUI  607 , for example, the question  606  can be posted by a user and answered by other academic users, and in some embodiments other non-academic users. As such the question GUI  607  can include the question  606 , followed by user answers  630 . In addition, the users answering the question  606  may be posted in a contributors list  632 , which may include the academic user&#39;s name, photo, university or institution, and an invitation to follow the particular contributor. The question GUI  607  may also include a link to follow the particular post  634  and a prompt to post a comment to an answer or question  636 . As can be seen, the profile ribbon  601  only partly appears on the question GUI  607  so that more comments can appear on the page, but as one skilled in the art will appreciate a full profile ribbon  601  may also appear. 
         [0058]      FIG. 6D  is a research article GUI  649  displaying a research article abstract according to an embodiment of the invention. As can be seen, the profile ribbon  601  appears at the top of the GUI, the article name and bibliographic information  650  appears below the ribbon; and the abstract  604  from the user profile page may also appear. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, abstract  604  may be abbreviated on the academic user profile GUI  600 , but appear in full length form on the research article GUI  649 . The research article GUI  649  can also include: a full-text link  640 , which links, e.g., to the website for the article publisher; a bookmark option for the publication  644 , a resources list  642 , which may include a list of the publications in which the article appears; an author list  646 , which links to the academic profiles for authors of the article; a comments section  648 , which allows a user to post comments to the article; and website links  652  to e.g., Facebook® or Twitter®. 
         [0059]    As one skilled in the art will further appreciate, the display pages of  FIGS. 6A-6D  are exemplary of the GUIs that may be initiated by the computer program of the instant invention to perform the inventive functions herein. Other GUIs may be created that will help with efficiency of data entry, add additional features, or further organize and maintain academic user profiles and research data, and accordingly not all embodiments of such GUIs have been described herein, but will be apparent to one of skill in the art. Accordingly, various GUIs may be used instead of or in addition to the GUIs described herein, and the GUIs are in no way to be considered limiting to the specification and claims, but are used for a descriptive sense only. 
         [0060]    Moreover, in the drawings and specification, there have been disclosed a typical preferred embodiment of the invention, and although specific terms are employed, the terms are used in a descriptive sense only and not for purposes of limitation. The invention has been described in considerable detail with specific reference to these illustrated embodiments. It will be apparent, however, that various modifications and changes can be made within the spirit and scope of the invention as described in the foregoing specification, and such modifications and changes are to be considered equivalents and part of this disclosure.