Epernicus – Worth joining yet another social network?

Epernicus is a social networking site developed solely for the working scientist. In place of your favorite music & books, you can list your present and past research advisors, projects you’re working on, and even post full-text PDFs of publications you’ve authored. Based on our experience, you’ll be better off searching for articles in a normal database, but their community tools might just be worth giving Epernicus a try. Because it’s a much narrower group than you’ll find on similar professional networking sites like LinkedIn, you may be more likely to find people with the niche expertise you are looking for.

In fact, that’s exactly why the founders of Epernicus started up the site. In an aptly titled post “Why should you join Epernicus if you’re on LinkedIn?“, they write:

Mikhail and I started Epernicus because we realized that the social networks to which we belonged weren’t able to serve our needs as scientists. The profiles didn’t capture what was important to scientists. And equally as important, we couldn’t use these networks to help us find expertise in real world scientific networks.

For example, I have hundreds of contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn. But neither site can help me find a person in my department who has who expertise with dynamic light scattering or siRNA delivery. This is why we built Epernicus.

Just how do you find these people? Their “Find an Expert” tool allows you to search people by keywords. However, there is no advanced search, so it tends to turn up some people who aren’t particularly relevant to your field. We’re hoping they fine tune this soon to make it easier for people to link up and collaborate.

The service also supports the creation of groups, similar to Facebook or LinkedIn groups, focused on whatever you would like. There’s a group for people who study zebrafish and one for people who’ve received NSF fellowships. However, since the site is just getting started, you might have to take the initiative to start your own if you don’t find what you’re looking for. We did a quick search for “biotech” and only turned up one group (vs. LinkedIn’s 524).

Similar to Facebook or Twitter, you can also post your “status” to broadcast what you are working on.

One unique feature is what the site calls the ‘BenchQ’. You can pose a question that will be visible either to everyone who uses the site, or just to people in your chosen field. Questions others have posed range from the very technical (on the surface enhanced Raman scattering of pyridine) to the philosophical (“Is pursuit of health an inalienable right?).

OUR CONCLUSION: You might find that Epernicus helps you connect better to others in your field, but you also might find that everything Epernicus does, another site (like Mendeley or LinkedIn) already does better. As they continue to build more functionality and more people join and create groups, this may change. For now, you’ll probably find yourself opting for LinkedIn more often than not.

To learn more before taking the plunge and joining yet another social network, check out their short introductory video:

P.S. We still haven’t tried out their customizable tool “epernicus: solutions”, which purports to offer “private expertise finding and networking solutions for research institutions in industry and academia. Based on the unique Epernicus platform and tailored to your organization’s structure and needs, Epernicus Solutions can help your researchers communicate and collaborate more effectively across groups, departments and locations.”

If your company or organization uses this toolset and you’d be interested in writing a review, please get in touch. We’d love to hear your perspective.