Knowledge map as a decision support tool for expert finding in research-based organizations

In a research organization, there are many decision making issues (such as employing a new member, finding some one who is expert in a filed and can take a role, defining areas of excellence and so on) that can be facilitated if the organization has a clear perception of what its human knowledge experts really know. Such knowledge can be clearly transferred to the decision makers of an organization by utilizing an informative knowledge map. A knowledge map is a visual representation of information which can be designed in a multiple level of details out of the knowledge assets of an organization. The main idea of this paper is to employ data mining approaches for creating the knowledge map in order to locate the experts and domains of their expertise in research-based organizations. In order to actualize the idea in this paper, a portion of UT-SAED (Faculty Members Research Management system) data has been used and a knowledge map has been automatically created out of a number of engineering areas in faculty of engineering, university of Tehran, Iran.