HeinOnline’s built-in Author Profile Pages highlight the scholarly work of authors throughout its databases by compiling each author’s publications, biographical information, ScholarCheck statistics, and more in one handy-dandy place. Over the years, valuable feedback from both authors and librarians has helped HeinOnline refine its author profiles, allowing users to better understand the context of an author’s work while also helping authors better promote their publications.

Our latest additions to Author Profile Pages are now live in beta form:

(1) Subjects identified with a particular author are now displayed on many author profile pages.

(2) Explore This Author is a new interactive tool which uses metadata, natural language processing, and machine learning to analyze authors and identify relationships between them.* Discover an author’s most-discussed topics, the journals in which they most frequently publish, recurring co-authors, and more with this exciting new feature.

*Author profile metrics continue to be fluid with this new tool as new material is added to HeinOnline.

The “Explore This Author” Feature

To use the Explore This Author feature, navigate to an author profile page in HeinOnline and select the new “Explore This Author” link. Let’s test out the feature by exploring HeinOnline author Bonnie Shucha.

Users will be redirected to an interactive chart of facets, each of which can be used to analyze the author’s work or his relationship to other authors or journals. Facets include:

• Topics: Frequent topics about which this author has written.
• Cited by: Authors who have cited this author.
• Cites to: Authors who have been cited by this author and the specific articles in which they are cited.
• Related Authors: Authors similar to the author in question. Calculated by an algorithm which takes into account all facets, as well as organizations, people, and locations within the texts of the author in question.
• Co-Authors: Authors who have co-written with this author and the articles they authored together.
• Publications: The journals in which the author is most frequently published.

Facets can be expanded and collapsed simply by clicking on them. Select the “Topics” facet to view Bonnie Shucha’s top ten discussed topics.

Users will notice that each topic is hyperlinked in blue. Clicking on any of the listed topics will automatically perform a query across all subscribed databases looking for works by Bonnie Shucha related to that topic. For example, click on “Internet” to view all available works by Bonnie Shucha on the topic.

Maybe you know all about Bonnie Shucha, but you’d like to find authors like her. Don’t worry, HeinOnline’s got you covered. Select the “Related Authors” facet to view a list of authors like Bonnie Shucha who write about the same topics, organizations, people, and more. Click on an author’s name to be directed to his or her author profile page.

Grab a friend and explore an author with this new tool today!

---

How Did We Do?

This tool is still in beta format, so we encourage all users to provide feedback. Simply fill out the feedback form found in the help section of the upper right-hand side of all HeinOnline pages.

Need help?

For help searching or navigating HeinOnline, we encourage users to contact our dedicated support team. Email, chat, or call us at (800) 277-6995!

Meanwhile don’t forget to smash that Subscribe button in the upper right-hand corner of this post to stay up to date on new content.