Finding Scholarly Experts

Finding scholarly experts is often expensive. One can use LinkedIn or ResearchGate which are expensive. Google Scholar is also available. None of these resources have good search tools.

The method I have developed is a bit convoluted but yields pretty good results. It is also free. Conceptually we want to search for papers. The papers contain the keywords which we are interested in.

We can use OpenAlex (works) to facilitate this activity.  Like all the other search tools in this system is has a search by weighted context. Once the search is complete you will see a button  labeled Authors.  Just press this button.

You will see two columns. One labeled first author and the other labeled last author. If you want an expert for legal proceedings you want the last author. Generally this person is the head of the lab, head of department or the lead author's thesis advertiser. Again, generally speaking they have a longer and more pervasive background.

If you want precise expertise you probably want the first author. The paper is their baby. It was their idea.