Using Open Calais to Identify the Research Areas of Engineering Faculty

Abstract

To meet the research, teaching, and learning needs of their users, academic librarians, particularly those functioning as subject liaisons, are expected to know the institution’s curriculum and research areas so that they can help shape library strategies to meet those needs and to connect users to the library’s resources and services. The present study investigated the use of Refinitiv’s free web demo, Open Calais, as a text mining tool to help learn about the research areas in the University of Tennessee’s Tickle College of Engineering. We investigated the following research questions: What interdisciplinary research areas in the College does Open Calais reveal? What are the differences in Open Calais’ tagging of Scopus and web pages? What terms were uncovered by Open Calais that were unexpected by the subject librarian? The results showed a mixed picture of the usefulness of Open Calais for learning the research areas of the College of Engineering.