A University at Your Fingertips

The HKU Scholars Hub puts more than 1,000 scholars and their outputs and expertise within easy reach of potential industry partners, research postgraduates, other academics and the media, enabling them to engage at the most fundamental level in the sharing of knowledge.

With more than 1,554,400 view counts in 2013/14, the Scholars Hub has also become an important tool for academics to raise and sustain their profiles.

It was developed in its current form by David Palmer of the University Libraries, who, with support of Knowledge Exchange (KE) funding, has transformed it from an internal repository into a rich asset for both the University and the community.

"If you're a world class research institution, you need something like the Scholars Hub. Other top universities in the world have something similar. We are the first university in Hong Kong to provide this kind of visibility and access," he said.

Every academic at the University has a page that lists their biographical details, publications, patents, external involvements such as journal editorships and advisory committee memberships, KE activities, their responsibilities at the University (such as supervising research postgraduate students), and research grants received.

The information is based on recent information extracted from HKU databases (such as the Research Outputs System and Community Service System) and external sources such as Scopus, the bibliographic database for academic journal articles.

Visitors to the Scholars Hub can search for someone based on such things as topic of interest, purpose (to find a publication, a research collaborator, a thesis supervisor or a media commentator) or name of the academic.

For example, a recent search on "housing" turned up 801 publications, seven academics open to research collaboration, 62 theses by research postgraduate students and their named supervisors, and 11 academics willing to speak to the media on this topic.

The Scholars Hub also provides contact details and links to academics' home pages, although it is often more up to date than those pages because it does not require the academics themselves to find time to input the new data – it does this itself automatically.

"Academics in the University input information on their research outputs, KE activities and external committee memberships, etc. to the central databases as part of their yearly performance review process.  The Scholars Hub consolidates vast amount of such information, so the academics get their profiles updated automatically. We consider this to be an extremely useful and valuable tool not only for external users, but also for making research and researchers more visible," Professor John Bacon-Shone, Associate Director of the Knowledge Exchange Office, said.

Another interesting feature is the bibliometrics data, which show the number of publications indexed and the number of citations per researcher on such sites as Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. There are also data on the number of visits made to a researcher's page and where those visits came from, by region, country, city and time of visit.

The Scholars Hub has also been configured so that it appears at or near the top of search engines when an academic's name is being searched. Links from department and faculty pages can help to push it up higher.

Mr Palmer likened the Scholars Hub to a directory, where external parties such as government or industry can find a suitable research expert to take on a project, scholars in other faculties or outside the University can find suitable partners to collaborate with, and potential research postgraduate students can find the most appropriate academic to supervise their thesis.

"One of our objectives with knowledge exchange is to share our research and expertise with the outside community in order to realise mutual benefit. The Scholars Hub is one way that we can do this. It makes information easy to find and consistent across the University."

How the HKU Scholars Hub helps them
“The HKU ResearcherPage team did an amazing job. I now have a full account of my publications and other accomplishments online that I can share with anyone who might be interested in my research. Best of all, I know that this information is in the safe hands of trained professionals so I don’t need to worry about updating and can spend more time on research.” Professor Hao Quan,  Department of Physiology, HKU		“Many thanks for your work! Based on the information of my ResearcherPage, I was chosen as an editor for a new book.” Researcher in the Department of Clinical Oncology, HKU
“An excellent portal for the world to find out about the work of our colleagues, and for us to know about the reach and access to our work.” Professor Nancy Law,  Faculty of Education, HKU		“It’s such a great service and saves such an enormous amount of data entry time.” Dr Iain Doherty, Director, Learning and Teaching Innovation at Navitas, Sydney, Australia
“Thanks again for handling all these issues in the Scholars Hub - which is very time consuming and ever changing.” Dr Angela Leung,  School of Nursing, HKU		“The HKU Scholars Hub incorporates a very impressive impact management system (one of the best I've seen).” Pasquale Loria, Associate Librarian, Client Services, University of Western Sydney

Quick search at the HKU Scholars Hub: find a research collaborator, find a thesis supervisor, or find a media contact