I am so pleased to tell you, the users of the ACS Network, that we are making some significant upgrades to the ACS Network later this month. I’ve mentioned it before in a previous post, but I can only reiterate that we have heard you and are making improvements to the Network.
So what does this mean for you?
Well, your profile is going to change. We are migrating all the profile information into the system which also serves up the community functions (groups, discussion, documents, etc.) Currently, our profiles and connections are hosted on a different system from the community functionality and the two systems do not integrate well.
The new profile will allow you to do a few things better.
You will be able to have four images show up in your profile. You will also be able to create your own avatar (that small image that appears beside any content you create) that can be related or totally separate from your profile picture.
Your publications will now allow you to not only put the citations information, but also include a place for an abstract. In addition, you can indicate if you have any coauthors who are members of the Network. When you include these, the coauthor will have the opportunity to approve or ignore this connection and the publication will appear in their list as well.
Publications actually become social content and you will be able to tag it so that others may find if they are searching on a tag or group of tags. Some spaces (groups or forums) may show recently added publications through a recent content widget.
Many of you have asked if you can download your publications from other sources. Although we haven’t tackled that, we do have another new feature which should allow you to post a CV to your profile. More on this later.
So in the meantime, bear with us. We’re working hard to make sure your data migrates into this new functionality. If you were thinking of building out your profile, you might want to wait until later this month when we have released the upgrade.
I promise to write more about upcoming functionality….and I hope you are as excited as I am about the improvements we’re about to make.
And as always, if you have questions, post them below and I will try to answer them the best I can.
