About

MIDAS Discover is a graphical search interface for exploring the world of the MIDAS network. You can use MIDAS Discover to find information about researchers working on topics of interest, understand networks of collaborations, learn about their papers and grants, and understand the breadth and depth of research in the MIDAS network.

A user can use the interface to find information about researchers working on special topic of interest, or papers of interest, etc. For example, the following example questions can be answered by using the MIDAS Discover visualization: Who is working on Mpox or Malaria? Where can I find contact information on researcher working on Malaria? Can I have a list of papers related to disease control strategies and information about the researchers working on that topic?

The MIDAS Discover visualization is based on the MIDAS members database. For each member, any publication and grant associated with infectious disease modeling is collected and the titles, abstracts, and keywords are extracted. Each member can also provide additional information during registration, or by requesting a profile update.

The interface consists of two parts: the Network View, and the Filter View.

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About The Interface

Network View

The Network View displays a network visualization using a force-directed graph. Each node represents a MIDAS Member, with the strength of the connection between each member determined by the number of papers that they have co-authored. Thus, two authors who have collaborated on many papers will have a very strong link, while others with less-frequent collaborations will have a weaker link.

Displaying Member Information

Clicking on a node will display information associated with the selected member. A panel will appear on the upper-right-corner of the visualization containing detailed information about the member: Name, Photo, Affiliation, link to email, GitHub, LinkedIn, OrcID, etc. depending on what the member shared. Collaborator, Papers and grants will also be available. The collaborators information is extracted from the papers co-authors associated with the selected member.

The co-authors are represented by a link drawn from the selected member node to the node of member that collaborated with the selected member (extracted from paper information).

When clicking on a node, the visualization will automatically zoom and pan to the selected member and its network.

Zooming & Panning

The visualization supports zooming. To zoom-in, double click in the white space on the graph or use the zoom associated gesture with the mouse and/or trackpad.

To scroll/pan, click on any whitespace in the visualization and drag the pointer in the desired direction.

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Filter View

The Filter provides a set of multiple dropdown filters to simplify the navigation of the MIDAS Discover visualization. The filter can specify that only specific people, papers, grants, organizations and paper keywords can pass through the filter.

Selecting a specific value in any dropdown will filter out all members that did not correspond to the filters, and display the results on the right panel of the Filter.

For example, selecting a specific organization in the "Person's Current Organization:" filter will select and display all the People, Grants and Papers link with this organization.

Definition

• Person(s): MIDAS Members
• Keyword(s): PubMed Keywords extracted from the papers that appear in the Papers category
• Person's Current Organization: Primary organizations/institutions of MIDAS members
• Paper(s): MIDAS-related papers written by MIDAS Members
• Grant: MIDAS-related grants that fund, or have funded, MIDAS Members

Using the Filter

To use any filter, click on it and a dropdown will appear with a search box on top. The dropdown contains all the possible values associated with that filter. It is possible to either scroll or use the search box to select the value of interest.

To clear an active filter, click on the "X" on the right side of the filter.

The results of the filtering is updated each time a new filter is applied. It displays three panels: People, Grands, and Papers. Only the results matching all the criteria of all the filters are displayed. Each column in the result panel can be sorted. The results may be displayed on multiple page.

The People panel displays the Name, Organization and Contact/Information Links (orcID, GitHub, ResearchGate, etc.) of the filtered MIDAS members. It is possible to click on a People Name and automatically see the associated nodes on the Network and display all the associated information. Clicking on the Organization or Links information will open a new tab to the organization or link of interest.

The Grants panel returns the Grant Number, Title, Start and End Date associated with the selection.

The Papers panel will display the Title and Publication Date of the associated papers. It is possible to click on the paper title to open a new tab to the associated MIDAS paper information page.

The Filter can be hidden by clicking on the "Hide filter results" button on the top right on the Filter.

Multi-Filtering

Multi-Criteria

It is possible to enter multiple choice in the same filter, for example, multiple persons. In this case, it will filter out all the MIDAS members that did not collaborate with ALL the selected persons.

Multiple Filters

Multiple filters can be used at the same time, for example a specific person and a specific paper. This filtering will return any MIDAS members who has worked with this person and on this paper.

It is important to note that as soon as one filter is used, the other filter dropdown are updated to avoid filtering returning no possible results.

Contact

If you have any questions about the MIDAS Discover visualization, please feel free to contact us at: questions@midasnetwork.us