ACIS Overview / ACIS documentation

# ACIS Overview

From the acis.openlib.org website:

> ACIS stands for `Academic Contributor Information System’.

> We believe that scholarly authors are an important source of academic metadata. Individual academics are willing to share data about themselves, because it promotes their work. The data they can share is very useful when combined with the usual library-type documents data.

> In 2000, the idea was poineered by Markus Klink and Thomas Krichel through the HoPEc project in Economics.

> ACIS project aims to create a general and powerful tool, which will help people implement the same idea in other areas than Economics.

Let’s say you have a significant database of documents data in an academic area. Let’s say you want to build a directory of scientists working in your field. First, you make sure ACIS can read your data. That may involve converting or developing a “driver” module. Then, you install ACIS on a website. You advertise it. People come and register on it. They create personal profiles. They “claim” authorship of documents in your database. (ACIS makes it easy.) They build and maintain their “on-line CVs”. You export the data to the interested third parties. (Sensitive information like email addresses will be excluded unless user permitted to publicize it.) Third parties then build public websites based on those profiles. It gets easier to track authors and their works. When people move between institutions, colleagues and learners still can find their works and contact information.

That’s what ACIS is for.

From the test.acis.openlib.org website:

> What to expect while trying the system

> … Given an ACIS system, anybody can come and register in it. Registration will create a profile and an account in the system. Registration process requires a valid email address and takes several screens to go through. After the last screen, system sends confirmation email with a confirmation URL inside. When user confirms, the profile is created and the account is activated.

> When a profile is created and each time it is updated, it is written to a static HTML page with a short permanent address (Example).

> When you login into the system, you may change various parts of the profile, including some items which were not available during the initial registration.

> Both at the initial registration and during a usual login, you may submit new institutions to the institutions database (through your affiliations profile). If you want, it will be added to your affiliations profile. Anyway, it will be sent by email to the ‘institutions data maintainer’.

> The changes you do to your profile won’t take effect until you log off. If you do not log off yourself, the system will close your session and log you off after a short while of inactivity. In either case it will send you an email notifying you of the profile update and give you a link.