Software and Documentation
Profiles Research Networking Software is available for free under a standard BSD Open Source license.
Community Wiki
Visit the Profiles RNS Google Group for additional information about the software not available on this website.
Technical Requirements
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or 2008 database server
- Microsoft Windows IIS web server with .NET 3.5
We recommend a physical database server. Some institutions have found a virtual machine is sufficient for the web server. Database storage will vary, but an instance with 20,000 people will require about 100 GB. Profiles RNS works on both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.
How to Cite Us
Profiles RNS is a grant-funded project. Our continued support depends on us being able to report on who is using our software. Please include the following acknowledgment on an easily accessible page of your Profiles RNS website:
Profiles RNS Version 1.0.4
The key features of Profiles RNS include:
- Import human resource data (name, addresses, title, affiliations, etc.)
- Automatic PubMed article extraction and author disambiguation
- Passive networks, such as top concepts, co-authors, similar people, same department, and physical neighbors
- Concept clouds, concept categories, geographic maps, and radial graph visualizations
- User editing of profile content, with full control over privacy settings and proxy capabilities
- Social network analysis metrics are calculated for co-author networks and stored in the database, but are not displayed on the website
- Profiles RNS is a Semantic Web application based on the VIVO 1.4 ontology, with support for RDF, SPARQL, and Linked Open Data (LOD).
This version of Profiles RNS was released on June 7, 2013.
This release includes a number of bug fixes and significant performance enhancements as well as expanded Concept and Publication profile pages. View the Release Notes for a complete list of changes. The Profiles RNS 1.0.4 download contains an upgrade script to convert a Profiles RNS Beta database or Profiles RNS 1.0.3 database to Profiles RNS 1.0.4. In order to upgrade from earlier versions of Profiles RNS 1.0.X, first upgrade to Profiles RNS 1.0.3 (see below for links to older versions), and then apply the Profiles RNS 1.0.3 upgrade script.
Profiles RNS Disambiguation Service
Profiles RNS uses a Disambiguation Engine to obtain Medline articles for a person. This is an XML-based web service that can be used independently of the Profiles RNS software. You send the service a person's name, email addresses, affiliations, and any known Pubmed IDs, and it will return all Pubmed IDs that match according to a specified probability threshold. The Profiles RNS Disambiguation Engine works by first identifying "seed" publications that have a very high match probability, and then using the authors, MeSH terms, article title words, journals, and affiliations of those articles to find additional matches. View the Disambiguation Service Documentation for more information.
Older Software Versions
Below are past releases of Profiles RNS. Institutions are encouraged to use the Lastest Version of the software. View the Release Notes for more information.
- Profiles RNS 1.0.3 - Released on March 13, 2013 - Performance enhancements and expanded Concept and Publication profile pages
- Profiles RNS 1.0.2 - Released on August 21, 2012 - User interface enhancements, such as new visualizations and connection pages
- Profiles RNS 1.0.1 - Released on July 3, 2012 - Full editing of profile content; standardized code and database object names
- Profiles RNS 1.0.0 - Released on June 1, 2012 - Rewrite of Profiles RNS to use linked open data (RDF) with the VIVO ontology
- Profiles RNS Beta - Released on July 22, 2011 - Pubmed disambiguation, active and passive networking, network visualizations