Tagged / profile pages

New Year’s Research Resolution #4 – update your staff profile page

Guidance

Happy New Year to you all and welcome back to work!

Each day this week we’ll be posting a New Year’s Research Resolution to help you get back into the swing of things. Today’s resolution is to update your staff profile page.

Our staff profile pages provide an excellent opportunity to promote yourself both internally and externally.  Jo Garrad’s post demonstrates that the pages are attracting thousands of views from all over the world.

The easiest way to navigate to your profile is to open the application (or click on the ‘academic profile’ link from the staff portal home page).  Next, click on ‘People’ in the page header and then on the start letter of your surname.  Finally, click on your name.  Your profile will then appear.  You can also search for your name.

You can update your profile page via BRIAN and fields you can add include:

  • photo of yourself
  • biography
  • research interests and keywords
  • teaching profile
  • PhD students supervised
  • invites lectures
  • qualifications
  • memberships
  • honours / awards
  • RKE grants
  • outreach and public engagement activities
Your publications will automatically be pulled through from BRIAN.

Having a complete and professional staff profile page can help to attract potential students and collaborators.  It will raise your profile externally and will ensure your page appears in web searches.

If you have any queries about BRIAN or the Staff Profile Pages then please direct these to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

New Year’s Research Resolution #3 – update your staff profile page

Guidance

Happy New Year to you all and welcome back to work!

Each day this week we’ll be posting a New Year’s Research Resolution to help you get back into the swing of things. Today’s resolution is to update your staff profile page.

Our new staff profile pages went live last October and provide an excellent opportunity to promote yourself both internally and externally.  Jo’s post demonstrates that the pages are attracting thousands of views from all over the world.

The easiest way to navigate to your profile is to open the application (or click on the ‘academic profile’ link from the intranet home page).  Next, click on ‘People’ in the page header and then on the start letter of your surname.  Finally, click on your name.  Your profile will then appear.  You can also search for your name.

You can update your profile page via BRIAN and fields you can add include:

  • photo of yourself
  • biography
  • research interests and keywords
  • teaching profile
  • PhD students supervised
  • invites lectures
  • qualifications
  • memberships
  • honours / awards
  • RKE grants
  • outreach and public engagement activities
Your publications will automatically be pulled through from BRIAN.

Having a complete and professional staff profile page can help to attract potential students and collaborators.  It will raise your profile externally and will ensure your page appears in web searches.

If you have any queries about BRIAN or the Staff Profile Pages then please direct these to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Oscar Wilde had his views on popularity, but he didn’t live long enough to see BU’s staff profile pages.

Since going live with the new staff profile pages on 2nd October, we have had 17,598 visits to the site.  Given below are some interesting statistics on who is looking at us and what they’re looking at:

Country / Territory  – Visits

1. United Kingdom – 54.02% 

2. United States – 7.56%

3. India – 2.94%

4. Germany – 2.03%

5. Canada –  2.13%

6. China – 1.64%

7. Australia – 1.97%

8. Malaysia – 1.53%

9. Netherlands – 1.18%

10. Greece – 0.77%

Rest of the World – 24.2%

Top 10 Pages (Based on page views)

1. People  –  9.69%   

2. Home  –  8.89%

3. Search Results  – 6.46%

4. Keywords  – 1.05%

5. Dr Hossein Hassani –  0.76%

6. Professor Stuart Allan – 0.58%

7. Dr George Filis –  0.51%

8. Professor Timothy Darvill – 0.48%

9. Dr Roman Gerodimos  –  0.39%

10. Professor Jens Holscher  – 0.38%

It is also useful for us to know how visitors found our pages and on what devices they are viewing the pages:

Channels             Visits

1. Organic Search  79.94%  – this is through Google, Bing, etc.

2.  Direct                    9.84% – they have a link set up to the page

3.  Referral                9.30% – from another web site but mainly BU’s web site, Research Blog, etc.

4.  Social                     0.87% – Twitter, Facebook, etc.

5.  (Other)                 0.02%

6.  Email                     0.02%

Usage across devices is as follows:

  • 85.64 % Desktop
  • 8.4% Mobile
  • 5.95% Tablet

The above shows that we are networking on a global scale and that the majority of visitors are searching the site rather than just viewing one individuals page.  It also demonstrates that the time taken to create our new profile pages has been worthwhile and highlights the importance of keeping your BRIAN account up to date.

If you have any queries about BRIAN or the Staff Profile Pages then please direct these to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

Staff Profile Pages to be updated

Guidance

The staff profile pages are being updated to tweak a few things such as changes to research themes, viewing and scrolling on mobile devices, ensuring photos don’t overlap with index, adding a few icons, to name but a few. 

This will take place from 4pm on Tuesday (22nd) until 8.15am on Wednesday.  It will mean that any content put into BRIAN will not update overnight.  The ‘refresh now’ button on the profile pages will also be disabled at this time.  The profile pages will be refreshed after 8am on Wednesday with any content that you’ve added to BRIAN.

There is still an outstanding issue with some links to BURO not working but this will be resolved in due course.

Thanks for your patience.

How to create the perfect profile

Guidance

BRIAN

The academic profile in BRIAN can hold a wide range of information about professional activities, publications and (shortly) grants.  As the information in BRIAN is used to populate the profile page which is available to anyone on the web, it is important that there is a minimum set of information that everyone maintains.  This minimum set of information will ensure that everyone’s academic profile contains entries for the same types of data, ensuring a consistent level of information across all profiles within the University.

The profile pages are displayed whenever anyone from inside or outside the University seeks information on a member of academic staff.  The external viewers include other academics who may be seeking collaboration partners, potential students, commercial enterprises investigating research or enterprise possibilities etc.  It is particularly important that those who are potentially being put forward for the REF have full external profiles.

To attain the minimum standard that has been defined for BRIAN, please ensure you have entries in the following areas.

  • Biography
  • Research theme
  • Keywords
  • Qualifications
  • Publications

In line with the new version of BRIAN, we have prepared a document ‘BRIAN – Minimum data requirements‘ containing examples of the information required.  This is especially relevant for the biography where recent examples of engaging biographies demonstrate what can be achieved.

Once the new version of BRIAN is deployed, we will add some more areas to the minimum standard.  These are:

  • Research
  • Grants
  • Photograph

In the new version of BRIAN, you will be able to maintain your photograph yourself.

Academic staff are encouraged to go beyond this minimum level and to record and maintain as much of their academic lives in BRIAN as possible.  We encourage you to use BRIAN as a living academic CV and to ensure that your research information and publications are always up to date.

There is no need to delay in adding and updating your information in BRIAN.  All the information you add to the current version of BRIAN will be carried across to the new version at the end of the month.

First Impressions

Guidance, News from the PVC

Let’s face it when BRIAN was launched last year the staff profile pages, which drew information from it and were written in something called VIVO, were less than satisfactory!  Lots of technical problems with the input data from BRIAN and its presentation was not up to BU’s normal standard.  You expressed your concerns in no uncertain terms and we have now put it right.  Working with academic colleagues IT and M&C have worked hard over the summer to construct a completely new interface, not in an obscure computer code but in something we can maintain and evolve easily ourselves.  They have done a brilliant piece of work, so BRIAN has a new set of external clothes and they rock!

After all, first impressions count and the staff pages are a crucial portal through which we present our academic achievements and expertise; and in reverse it is a lens for the world to view and search the wonderful talent that exists here at BU.  The new pages go live at the start of October 2013; they are finished and ready but there is an upgrade to BRIAN due in September which needs to be installed first.

 The improvements include:

 –       A more professional look and feel

–       The opportunity to showcase selected publications

–       Users can upload their own photo (via BRIAN)

–       Improved searching by name, keyword

–       Closer integration with the research themes

–       Fixing the technical problems we have experienced

Since we have developed this interface ourselves here at BU we can develop it further and continue to respond to your feedback.  The BRIAN team are managing the development of the replacement.  If you would like to know more about the project, please email BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk.

 The staff profile pages will continue to use data drawn from BRIAN so please keep updating your content in BRIAN since a profile is only as good as the input!  There should be no impact on staff during the switch to the new pages, although there may be minor disruption to the availability of the profile pages during the transition.  Let me know what you think of the new pages?

Upgrading BRIAN

Guidance

In line with our commitment to provide applications that meet users’ and the University’s needs, we will be upgrading BRIAN next month.

The upgrade is scheduled for 23rd September 13.  The upgrade contains a number of improvements.  These include:

–       New, more intuitive look and feel

–       Users can upload their own photos

Importantly for the University, the upgrade includes enhancements that are required for the REF submission due in November.

The upgrade of BRIAN is linked to a new version of the external staff profile pages.  More information on this will be available shortly.

The BRIAN team are managing the upgrade.  If you would like to know more, please email BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk.

We will keep you posted on the upgrade and how it impacts users in the coming weeks.

How do I…, Why does it…, I can’t seem to…, What just happened?

Guidance

Here are the latest BRIAN FAQs (BRIAN is BU’s publications managment system and much more), which also include information on the external profile pages (the information input on BRIAN feeds through to your profile page, giving you complete control over the content). 

The FAQs may provide the answer to something that’s been bugging you for a while.   If not, the FAQs include the link to the latest guidance documents and videos so that you can find out more about how to use BRIAN.  

If you still can’t find the answer to your query then please email us at BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk and we will be happy to help.

Academic Profile Pages

Guidance

You may have noticed that when changing the name structure on the academic profile pages, the system defaulted to your legal name and not your ‘known as’ name.  Please bear with us whilst we rectify this glitch.

If you have any other queries, please direct these to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

Thanks for your patience.

Academic Profile Page changes

Guidance

I am pleased to inform you that a number of improvements were made to the Academic Profile Pages yesterday. 

  • Names are now shown in Forename and then Surname order;
  • Keywords are now displayed near the top of the page and so if you haven’t selected yours yet, please do;
  • Publications are now ordered in their sub-types, i.e. journal article, conference, book, etc.

There are other changes that will be implemented shortly and so watch this space.

Please also note that the remaining old staff profile pages (for the School of Applied Sciences and School of Tourism) will be removed shortly and replaced with the links to their current academic profile page (updated through BRIAN).  Those individuals with an old School web page will be contacted directly.

Reminder – BRIAN upgrade

Guidance

BRIAN will be unavailable from 9am to 12noon today due to an upgrade to the system.  Please see yesterdays posting for details of the upgrade.  This will also mean that the external staff profile pages will be unavailable.  These may be unavailable for slightly longer as the information from BRIAN will take time to upload into the web pages.

Thank you for your patience.

Changes to the external Staff Profile Pages

Guidance

After helpful feedback from staff, we have agreed to temporarily remove the charts that appear on your external staff profile pages.  These were a snapsnot of your publications, co-author network (which only showed current BU staff), and map of science (which isn’t clear as to what it shows).  We will consider re-activating the available charts when they have been improved and become more meaningful.

The staff profile pages are currently not mapping across all ‘Authors’ listed within BRIAN for publications.  Therefore, the staff profile pages have been amended so that publications now have an author title of ‘Authors at BU’.  Development is underway for a complete list of authors to be shown and this will be provided shortly.

BRIAN Changes

Guidance

BRIAN and the external staff profile pages have been amended so that they now only show your first name and surname.  If you have a ‘known as’ name within the HR database then this will be displayed instead of your first name.  If you would prefer a ‘known as’ name to be displayed then you will need to contact HR through HREnquiries@bournemouth.ac.uk to request a change to your ‘known as’ name.

Within the external staff profile pages the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) link on individual publications is now active as a hyperlink and will open the publication.  Also, when searching for a staff member the URL displayed at the top of the staff profile pages has been shortened to ‘http://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/display/username’  and this address will also appear in the ‘link’ icon displayed under that persons photo.

The Professional Activity ‘Job Title’ has been removed from BRIAN as this information is pulled through from the ‘staff details changer’.  All job titles that were added into BRIAN have been updated in the staff details changer to ensure that your correct job title is displayed.

BRIAN latest

Guidance

Now that the summer has been (did you notice?) and gone, many of you are now turning your attention to your external profiles and how to make them look as impressive as possible to the outside world.  This has meant an increase in queries about how to use BRIAN and so I have created a list of answers to FAQ’s and these can be found in the link below.  Before I get on to this though, have you read the Blog article advertising the ‘Scopus and BRIAN Workshops’ that Matthew Bennett will be running shortly?  If not, click here for more details.

BRIAN FAQ‘s

There are a number of developments that are underway to improve BRIAN and so keep your eye on the Blog for more updates.

External Staff Profile Page to be updated

Guidance

The BU External Staff Profile pages are being updated on Thursday, 6th September and will be unavailable from 16.00 to 22.00 hours.

The URL links for individual staff pages will be shortened and will reflect the ‘link’ icon within a staff page.  The ‘link’ icon will then become active.

External Profile Pages

Guidance

The external staff profile pages that existed before BRIAN will be removed from the BU web site on Monday, 3rd September.  These have only been available internally for the last two months.  External visitors to the web site have been directed to the new staff profile pages since the introduction of BRIAN.

To find out how to improve your external profile page, please visit the guidance available for using BRIAN and how this populates your external profile page.  You can find user guides and short videos here.