Direct2experts

DIRECT2Experts is a federated research-networking platform developed as a pilot initiative by the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium. It enables users to search for researcher expertise across multiple institutions in a federated manner—without a central database—by connecting separate institutional research-networking systems. 

Who it serves & how
The platform is designed for institutions, researchers and collaborative teams in the biomedical and translational research domain. The primary service is:

• Expert discovery: A user enters a term such as “informatics” and the network returns the number of matching researchers at each participating institution, with links to the institution’s detailed profiles. 
• Inter-institutional collaboration support: By linking institutions’ existing researcher-profile or networking systems, DIRECT2Experts allows for cross-institution search and discovery of investigators, aiding team formation and knowledge sharing. 

Key features & value proposition

• Federated architecture: Rather than aggregating all data into one central repository, institutions provide a lightweight web service that returns counts and links for a search term. This respects institutional autonomy and privacy while enabling networked discovery. 
• Rapid institutional adoption: In its initial pilot phase (launched in 2011), the system connected 28 institutions with over 30,000 profiles across seven major research-networking products. 
• Cross-platform compatibility: The system is designed to work with a variety of existing research-networking tools and infrastructure deployed at institutions, lowering entry barriers. 

Considerations

• The user interface and functionality (in the pilot version) were deliberately kept simple to facilitate institutional participation, meaning some advanced search features, filtering or ranking may be limited. 
• Coverage depends on the institutions participating and the data they expose, not all researchers or institutions may be included.
• Because the system aggregates counts and links rather than providing full internal data, users often need to be redirected to the host institution’s site to view detailed profiles.