Launching Project Search 2.0

At Impacter we believe in the power of connections. Bringing academics, policymakers and industry together who work on the same challenges is among the greatest joys of our work. In the ever growing space of international academic research it is hard to find your intellectual brethren. That is why today we’re launching an improved way of navigating our state of the art database containing approximately 469.000 funded research projects.

So tell our searcher what you like!

Impacters’ searcher looks for similarity. This means the algorithm might find an overlap with the case study you merely intended as an example in the search results. Wouldn’t it be great if you could ignore that match, and drill down on the relevant one? You can do exactly this, with Active Learning. It is a process that allows you to steer the algorithm through telling it what you like and dislike. You can mark the result that overlaps on the case study as irrelevant, while flagging the project using an interesting methodological approach as interesting.

From every iteration, Impacter will learn to better identify what you intend to find, and give the best fitting suggestions from the dataset.

Why funded research projects?

Most databases for academic search focus on searching in peer-reviewed publications. These publications reflect an accepted state-of-the-art in academia. However, the nature of the publication and review process cause publications to lag behind actual research activities. Because the matches Impacter makes should be relevant for the future, we query funded projects that include projects that have only just started, making the results more future-oriented.

Active Learning for Uniqueness

The regular ‘Uniqueness’ score of Impacter now includes the same feature! Starting with the suggestions based on your proposal, you can steer the results towards the set of data that closely fits your work. It is a great resource to find potential collaborators, because there is no better predictor of interest in a research topic than previous involvement in a similar research project. Sometimes, users of Impacter use the search engine to find reviewers to in- or exclude. Lastly, it can be a great source of inspiration to read how others wrote abstracts about similar problems.

Want to give it a go? Head directly to the Project search!