People Directory

The People Directory is ArkSphere's primary tool for finding and connecting with researchers. It is accessible at /arksphere/people and organized into five tabs that cover discovery, existing connections, follow relationships, and sphere membership.

Five Tabs

The People section uses a tabbed layout to separate different views of your network:

Discover Tab

The Discover tab is the main search interface for finding researchers across the platform. It supports full-text name search combined with several structured filters.

Search and Filters

• Name search -- Type a researcher's name for direct lookup. Partial matching is supported.
• Knowledge fields -- Select from 94 Frascati classification fields organized across six domains: Natural Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Medical and Health Sciences, Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences, Social Sciences, and Humanities and the Arts.
• Location / Country -- Multi-select with autocomplete. Filter by one or more countries to find researchers in specific regions.
• Career level -- Filter by academic stage, ranging from Undergraduate through Senior Researcher.
• User type -- Filter by professional role, including Individual Researcher, Student, Funding Officer, Freelance Consultant, Startup Founder, Policy Maker, and Innovation Broker.
• Research focus areas -- Free-text keyword entry for specific research topics or methodologies.

Results are paginated at 20 items per page.

AI Match Scores

When you are signed in, the Discover tab displays AI-generated match scores on researcher cards. These scores reflect how well a researcher's profile aligns with your own expertise, research interests, and network. Higher scores indicate stronger potential for collaboration.

Profile Cards

Each researcher appears as a profile card containing:

• Avatar, name, and title/role -- The researcher's photo, full name, and current position.
• Institution -- Their primary institutional affiliation.
• Bio snippet -- A brief excerpt from their profile description.
• Expertise tags -- Up to three tags representing their primary research areas.
• Network counts -- Connection, follower, and sphere membership counts.
• Match score -- Displayed on the Discover tab only, indicating AI-calculated relevance to your profile.

Connection Status

Each profile card shows the current relationship status between you and the researcher:

Available Actions

Depending on the connection status, the following actions appear on each card:

• View -- Open the researcher's full profile.
• Connect -- Send a connection request (when status is None).
• Accept / Decline -- Respond to an incoming connection request (when status is Pending).
• Follow / Unfollow -- Follow or unfollow the researcher independently of connection status.
• Add to Sphere -- Add the researcher to one of your Spheres.

Connections Tab

The Connections tab shows all researchers with whom you have a mutual connection. These are people who have accepted your connection request or whose request you have accepted. Connection profiles display a "connected" status badge.

Following and Followers

The Following tab lists people you follow (up to 100 at a time). Following is a one-directional relationship -- you see their activity in your feeds without requiring a mutual connection.

The Followers tab lists people who follow you. From this tab you can view their profiles or send them connection requests.

In My Spheres

This tab aggregates all confirmed members from spheres you own or belong to. It provides a quick way to browse the people in your research communities without navigating into each individual sphere. Click any member to view their full profile or take the same actions available on the Discover tab.

Using People Directory for Collaboration

The People Directory integrates with other ArkSphere features for common research workflows:

• Consortium assembly -- Use the Discover tab's knowledge field and location filters to find researchers with specific expertise in target countries, then add them to a Sphere for consortium planning.
• Network expansion -- Check the Followers tab for researchers interested in your work, and convert promising followers into mutual connections.
• Cross-referencing -- Browse the In My Spheres tab alongside the Organizations directory to identify which institutions are represented in your research communities.