Use Interfolio Data Service
The Interfolio Data Service (IDS) is technology that populates the Faculty Activity Reporting (FAR, F180) module in bulk with accurate data on faculty members' academic work. It pulls from sources like CrossRef, OpenAlex, and Scopus, covering over 250 million activities published in more than 60,000 journals, government systems, and authoritative outlets.
Throughout the year, IDS collects information on faculty publications, such as Books, Book Chapters, Journal Articles, and Proceeding Publications. It automatically cleans the data by formatting it, verifying that scholars with similar names are linked to the correct information, and consolidating duplicate activities. Scholars can then validate the academic data associated with them before it is saved to their Interfolio profile. Only after a scholar validates their data will it be stored in their Interfolio profile.
See also this release note describing the updated process that allows Faculty Admins to see activity classifications (pre-populated when possible) within the validation experience. This article explains how to use the Interfolio Data Service (IDS) to efficiently add scholarly activity information to FAR.
Note that IDS is an add-on service and might not be currently available at your institution.
Data Deduplication
The Data Service avoids presenting duplicate data already in the FAR module by using deduplication scripts that check against the FAR database during the IDS data refresh. Faculty should accept IDS recommendations before manually adding scholarly records, as deduplication only occurs if the data found with IDS has been added to FAR first. If data is added to FAR after IDS runs, deduplication will not take place.
Data Disambiguation
Data disambiguation in IDS is based on name, institution email, ID, discipline, and institution. The Data Service will use ORCiD and Scopus Author ID for disambiguation where it is found with our searches for people. Note that integration with individual ORCiD accounts is also possible through the FAR module.
Review Matched Activities
- On your Homepage, scroll down to the Matched Activities section, which includes the Activities Need Review card (showing matched activities available for review) and the Activities Accepted card (counting activities added to your account).
- Click either card under the ‘Matched Activities’ section on the homepage to navigate to the Matched Activities page where you will see a list of your matched activities. Ensure the ‘Need Review’ tab is selected.
This tabbed interface displays information from IDS categorized into ‘Need Review’ (activities ready for review), ‘Accepted’ (activities added to the account), and ‘Deleted’ (activities chosen not to be added to FAR).
Bulk Accept and Reject (Delete) Recommendations
To bulk accept activities under the ‘Need Review’ tab, check the boxes next to the activities you want to Accept and then click on the Accept Activities button above.
Where recommendations are complete these records will automatically be accepted and added to FAR. Where recommendations do not have required fields completed, these will be highlighted, and you will need to go through each item separately and include the missing data and accept.
To bulk delete activities, check the boxes and then click the Delete button. Deleted activities will move to the ‘Deleted’ tab and will no longer be shown to the user.
If you delete something by mistake, go to the ‘Deleted’ tab, select the activity, and then click the Restore button to move it back to the ‘Need Review’ tab.
- To edit, accept, or delete activities, click the hyperlinked Title of Activity to open the Step 1: Record Information window on the right-hand side.
- Fill out Step 1: Record Information and Step 2: Activity Classifications.
Note the ‘Next Step’ and ‘Accept Activity’ button will become active once all required fields are filled in.
Administrators can also clear scholarly duplicates for faculty from the Administration page.
About IDS Deduplication
- IDS automatically deduplicates recommendations by comparing fields like type, date, journal, title and authors with existing FAR records, giving equal weight to all fields. This process does not apply to data managed by the Data Services team or manually entered by faculty. All fields (such as type, dateinfo, journal, location, number, info, pages, publisher, title, volume, yearinfo, and author) have equal weight during the comparison.
- If the total match % of all fields is:
- < 82% then it is flagged as a new item and is added to their queue to validate.
- > 82% then it is assumed to be a duplicate and IDS will not show it as a recommendation.
- If the matched record and imported record has empty values for one of the fields being compared, then that field is ignored in the calculations.
- Deduplication does not remove extra white spaces and is case-sensitive, meaning entries with different capitalization will be treated as distinct.
FAQs
Where does Interfolio source its data, and what types of scholarly activity does IDS retrieve?
IDS pre-populates FAR with bibliographic data about faculty scholarship pulled in via integration with CrossRef and OpenAlex for easy validation by faculty members or their proxies. Types of scholarship available via the IDS include Books, Book Chapters, Journal Articles, and Proceeding Publications.
Note that the Web of Science by Clarivate currently cannot be connected with the IDS, but can connect with FAR directly (existing functionality).
Will IDS regularly fetch and load my activity data into FAR?
Yes, IDS is refreshed regularly with current data for all faculty members in the service.
- Data is updated simultaneously for all clients on a recurring basis.
- After removing duplicates and verifying the data, IDS presents the data to faculty for validation through a workflow similar to the existing Activity Input Workflow in the FAR module.
- Once a faculty member or proxy validates the citation, it will appear in FAR.
Where is the record of my latest scholarly activity?
Not seeing your latest scholarly activity? If something new has been published since the last update, it may still be on its way to the Homepage. If it is not time sensitive, give it time. If it does not appear in the next update, it may not have been captured in our source data pool. You might need to enter it manually or search an individually linked data source if applicable. For time-sensitive entries, manual entry or a search through linked sources will be necessary.
Will IDS integrate with my on-campus system/sources?
Currently, IDS can only pull data from sources automatically connected to the Data Service. The Interfolio FAR module still offers all of the existing data input options.