About Profiles Research Networking Software

How to Get a BU Profile

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How Can I Have My Profile Created?

BUMC IT Might Automatically Create Your Profile - You Might Not Need to Request Creation

BUMC IT may already be creating your profile if you fall under one of the categories outlined below (although regardless of category, you may request to have your BU profile created at any time).

A) Your profile will be created automatically, and you will be notified by email when it is online, if you are a full-time or part-time non-volunteer faculty member, or a volunteer faculty member affiliated with one of the institutions listed below.

The affiliate institutions for which we automatically create profiles are:

  • Boston Medical Center
  • Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center
  • Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center
  • Roger Williams Medical Center
  • VA Bedford – Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital
  • VA Boston Healthcare System
  • VA Boston Healthcare System - Brockton

Profile creation is triggered when your official appointment information is entered by your department into the university’s SAP HR database. If you are entered into SAP with an unofficial “placeholder” appointment (such as Clinical Instructor) then your profile will be hidden until your official appointment information is entered or we receive confirmation of your future official title from your department.

B) You will receive an email inviting you to request a BU profile if you are a volunteer faculty member who is not affiliated with one of the institutions listed above.

C) You can request to have your BU profile created at any time regardless of A) or B) above; we will contact your department and upon confirmation we will create your profile for you and send an email to you when it is online.

To request your BU profile, send an email to bumchelp@bu.edu with subject “Please Create My BU Profile”, and include as much information as possible from the Critical & Optional sections below.

Critical Components to Include in Your Email:

  1. All full-time and part-time BUMC faculty are required to obtain an ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) and to report it to BU. You can get an ORCID if you don’t already have one, and report your ORCID to BU, using the “BU ORCID Interface” button at this link. Reporting your ORCID to BU will also connect your ORCID to BU Profiles. If you need assistance, email bumchelp@bu.edu.
  2. Attach the most recent copy of your CV. If recent publications are missing, please augment with a biosketch or pub list.
  3. If you are volunteer/affiliate faculty at BU and your primary position is at another organization, provide your position title and department/organizational entity as defined by your current primary organization.
  4. If it is not on your CV, tell us your full name. Please include your middle name if you have one, even if you do not want your middle name displayed – we need it for disambiguation.
  5. Tell us how you would like your full name to appear at the top of your profile, along with your educational degrees (e.g. Christopher W. Shanahan, MD, MPH).
  6. We strongly recommend you attach a headshot photo for us to add to your profile.
  7. Send a good “elevator pitch” narrative description of your professional expertise and interests.
  8. If you are a PI/project leader formally listed with the NIH on any NIH RePORTER grants, include a link to one of your grants (or the project number). We can use that to link to all of your other NIH grants automatically.
  9. Include a list of MeSH keywords that best reflect your scholarly expertise - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh

Optional Components to Include in Your Email:

  1. Send us external website links that are representative of your expertise, research, or scholarly output. Examples might include a LinkedIn profile, My NCBI, a BU department or external profile, ResearchGate or Google Scholar links, or a lab/research website.
  2. Send website links to professional videos, curriculum, and social media, such as Twitter handle/SlideShare profile/YouTube videos, etc.
  3. Send any honors and awards you wish to display publicly in chronological order if they are not listed on your CV (start/End date, name of honor, and organization/institution bestowing the honor).
  4. If applicable, send us any mentoring role(s) and a mentoring narrative. See Mentoring in the FAQ section for more. The roles are defined here. There is more on mentoring in BU Profiles at https://profiles.bu.edu/WhatsNew/#details_indicate_willingness.

What Steps Should I Take after My Profile Is Created?

Things to do after you receive email notification that your BU profile has been created:

  1. Review your publications list – is it accurate? BU Profiles' automatic disambiguation tries to find you via PubMed. If you are getting a lot of incorrect pubs, please email bumchelp@bu.edu to let us know.
  2. Report your ORCID to BU if it doesn’t already appear on your profile, which will connect it to BU Profiles. To do this, use the “BU ORCID Interface” button at http://www.bu.edu/orcid. That site also has more information on ORCID. If you need assistance, please email bumchelp@bu.edu.
  3. Consider adding pronouns to display on your profile. You can do this using the Edit menu, after logging in (there is a Login to BU Profiles link in the upper right hand corner of every page). More info on adding pronouns is here.
  4. Browse some harder-to-spot features within Profiles:
    • NIH iCite integration: - go to the publications tab and click the green iCite analysis button. More info appears here.
    • Media mentions & social media integration: - go to the Social/Media tab and browse Media Mentions, Tweets, Twitter Likes and Featured Videos. More info on media mentions is here.
    • Altmetric and Dimensions badges linked to individual publications. Hovering over the badges or clicking on them will exhibit different behaviors. Only 2 years+ pubs tend to have Dimensions badges, but AltMetrics can appear at any time. More info on Altmetric is here, and on Dimensions is here.