Research Expert Finder

Keyword search returns the people who use your words. Upload a document instead and get the researchers whose published work is closest to it, each with a short reason.

Find the researchers publishing on this topic

Upload a paper, a report or any document on the topic you are mapping. We read what it is about, then shortlist researchers whose published work sits close to it, with a short reason for each. PDF or Word.

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Supported formats: PDF Word (DOCX)

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Why the document is a better query than the keyword

A research expert finder returns the researchers whose published work is closest to a document you provide. It answers one question, which is who is working on this, and it answers it from the text of the document rather than from a search box. Literature reviews, technology scouting, expert panels, journalism and academic due diligence all start at that same question, and all of them usually start with a keyword and a search engine.

Keywords are the weak part. The same problem carries different names in different communities, methods papers rarely use the vocabulary of the field they serve, and the terms you know are the terms of the corner of the literature you already read. Searching them back returns the people who write the way you write. Reading a full document instead, with its methods, its data and its framing, catches the groups who work on your problem under another name, which is exactly the part of the map you cannot see from where you are standing.

How to read a shortlist of experts

Read recency before volume

Somebody with four papers on the topic since last year is usually a better read than somebody with forty spread over a career that moved on.

Check the position in the author list

First and last authors carry the work and the direction. A middle name on a large collaboration tells you the group was involved, not that the person leads on it.

Separate depth from breadth

Some names come back because the topic is their programme, others because they publish across a wide area. Both are useful, for different questions.

Expect the index to have gaps

Work that is not in English, not journal-shaped, or done in industry and never published is invisible here. Absence from the list is not evidence of absence from the field.

Relevance is not authority

The order is proximity to the document you uploaded. It is not a ranking of who matters most, and no citation count is used to build it.

Twenty names is a start, not a map

A shortlist opens the reading. Following the references and the citing papers of two or three good hits will take you further than a longer list would.

How the expert shortlist is built

The shortlist is built from the document you upload rather than from a topic you type, so every name arrives with the overlap that put it there. What it cannot tell you is who is most respected, who is right, or who will answer an email.

  1. Upload a document on the topic

    A paper, a preprint, a report or a brief, as PDF or Word. It does not have to be yours. No account and no payment. A free usage limit is tied to your email address.

  2. We extract the topic and methods

    The match runs on what the document is about and how the work was done, which is what makes it find groups whose vocabulary differs from yours.

  3. We match against OpenAlex

    Candidates come from OpenAlex, an open catalogue of more than 300 million scholarly works. Only public bibliographic records are used.

  4. You get a shortlist with reasoning

    Each name carries its affiliation and a short note on the overlap, so you can decide in one line whether to open their papers.

  5. You do the reading

    The shortlist points at people worth reading, not at conclusions. We never contact anyone, we show no contact details, and nothing here tells you whether someone is available to talk.

Research expert questions

It does not rank experts by authority, reputation or citations, it does not tell you who is available to talk, and it gives you no contact details. It answers one question, which is who has published work close to this document. Whether a name on the list is the leading voice on the topic, whether they are right, and whether they would answer an email are all things you have to establish yourself.