Automation and networks, build all the things!
Introducing co-author constellation and automated publication monitoring
When I get down time here and there, lately I’ve been using it for building things - seeing how quickly I can go from “I wonder” to “working prototype” using Codex and Claude. I’ll do another post later on my approach to building with AI, but that’s not the topic for today. My first project was erythromelalgia.net, which I worked on to help familiarize myself with the state of research of that rare condition. Through working on that, I learned about the resources at OpenAlex - if you’ve never checked it out, it is an amazing free resource for the community.
After I used the OpenAlex API to create automated researcher networks for the erythromelalgia website, I had an “I wonder” moment - thinking about whether I could apply the same ideas and build out a generalized tool where any researcher across any field could put in their name and get a personalized output summarizing their publications and co-author network.
Co-author Constellation
After a few weeks of back and forth building and testing, I now have a version of that vision available for you all to try out at coauthorconstellation.genomicepi.com! You can enter your name or ORCID. If you have a common name, I’d definitely recommend using your ORCID. If you use a name and there are multiple matches, you’ll be given the opportunity to select which person you want to select, or multiple if you want to combine (different versions of a name (for example if you have KJ Allen and Krisandra J. Allen).
Once you’ve put in your name or ORCID and clicked build network, you can then:
Make sure the automated preprint-publication matching is accurate (and choosing if you want to keep it collapsing those or count them separately)
Decide if you want to include conference abstracts.
Choose to keep or remove things like protocol.io entries, peer review responses etc.
Remove any papers that aren’t actually yours (more common if you have a common name!)
You’ll also get a share button which will copy a link to your clipboard that you can share with anyone else to see the profile you’ve built - they’ll see your network with all the above configurations that you selected!
You’ll get a number of different views such as a histogram of publications over time by year, as well as a list of your most frequent collaborators and your most recent publication and top cite publications that you can toggle between.
If you click over to the Institutions tab, you’ll see a network digram showing the various institutions that you’ve collaborated with (top 50) colored by country. It can be fun to see different project networks pop out!
Finally, probably my favorite part is the map! You can show or hide the pins of the individual locations of institutions you’ve collaborated with, and you can click play to see as your network has expanded over time.
That’s all for this iteration! I would love to have you all test it out and provide feedback. There is a survey at the top of the page as well as here where you can submit your thoughts. I hope you have fun, and do let me know what you think! The next feature I want to add is the ability to search for multiple names if you’ve published under different names.
Automated Publications
Borrowing on another element from erythromelalgia.net, I upgraded the publications page at genomicepi.com/publications to not only have my list of some favorite publications, but an automated query against PubMed that runs daily and brings in new relevant papers - Github Actions are one of my favorite things!
The query has been a work in progress to try and bring in everything that’s relevant while keeping out things like human molecular epidemiology studies (humans - not nearly as fun as pathogens!). I’ll keep refining that over time. If you see papers that you expect should have been pulled in, drop me a note and I’ll see how to adjust.
Please check out the updates, and pass them along to any friends and colleagues who would benefit. Looking forward to continuing to add new tools and resources, please do let me know if there are things you would like to see added or updated.