New Features and Improvements

In4M Analysis Preview Sidebars ^New

With this release, we are pleased to announce new Analysis Preview Sidebar functionality, providing new analysis sidebar presets that provide a different ‘lens’ into your results and include new In4M sidebars for Influence Mapping.

The Lens International Innovation and Industry Influence Mapping (In4M) analysis sidebar presets use citation joins to map the influence of academic research on academia and enterprise, allowing you to explore and expose the degree to which scholarly work output influences outcomes for society.

The new analysis sidebar presets are fully available to all signed in users and for anonymous users to trial. You can read more about In4M and influence mapping here In4M: Influence Mapping.

Professional Workspace Improvements

This release also includes further improvements and additions to the Professional Workspace and Lens Profiles associated with user accounts.

Account Settings:

• Updated the Account Settings and separated the privacy settings onto a separate Privacy tab.
• Added a setting to the account Privacy tab to select a default access for all new work area items.
• Added an option to download your personal data and work area items to the account Privacy tab.
• Added a display name field to the account settings tab. Your display name will appear on your profile and next to your published collections and other public work area items.
• Added an option to create/reset a password for users who have created an account or logged in with a linked service.

Lens Profiles:

• Added an option to create a custom Lens Profile URL to the account settings tab. The custom Profile URL must be a minimum of 5 characters only Latin alphanumeric characters are supported. We encourage users to use their full name when creating a custom profile URL for sharing.
• Updated the summary stats on Lens Profiles to display additional patent stats for inventors.
• Profile URLs now redirect to the custom URL if available and to the first available tab (i.e. scholarly works, patents or collections). Profile loading and tab navigation have also been improved.

Upcoming Changes to Accounts

In preparation for the upcoming changes to accounts announced in the last release, we will soon be contacting users and disabling accounts that have not been used in over a year. If you would like to maintain your account on Lens.org, you must sign in to your account and make sure your details are up-to-date, and carefully read the terms of use to ensure that you are qualified for an account. As a reminder, we are asking all account holders to use their institutional email address with their Lens account where applicable. We will also be implementing a ‘real name and real institution’ policy as we move forward.

Please note, the individual commercial accounts are intended to provide Professional Workspaces affordably to sole practitioners or small businesses. We ask that those working for larger entities contact us for an affordable Institutional / Enterprise Toolkit account.

Other Improvements and Changes

The Lens is a work in progress and with each release The Lens team improves on certain features or perfects the quality of the data and the service to provide you with the most comprehensive data we can source. While often these changes stem from users’ feedback, they also originate from improved data processing and improvements in the source data. In this release, here is the list of other improvements and changes that were implemented:

• Updated the Scholarly Works Date filter and added an option to include partial publication dates in the date range filter. This option includes all scholarly works with a partial publication date, which have been converted to a complete date for filtering. Note, partial dates have been set to the first day of the month and so may not accurately represent the actual publication date of scholarly works.
• Updated the search tips modal design.
• Unresolved cited patent keys and their citation phase/category are now displayed on the Cites Patents tab of individual patent records.
• Added the Moore Inventor Fellows Report to the Lens Reports page.
• Updated the charts in the default analysis sidebar.
• The number of records displayed on the results page has been limited to 10 records for anonymous users. You will need to sign in to your Lens account to view more than 10 records per page.
• Exports are now limited to one export of more than 1,000 records every 5 mins for users without a commercial subscription.

Fixes

• The export modal now closes after downloading 1,000 records.
• Fixed the time series chart in the default analysis sidebar.
• Fixed the navigation breadcrumbs on Lens Reports.
• Added a cap on the maximum number of high-scoring segment pairs (HSP) to PatSeqFinder BLAST searches. We now allow a maximum of 30 HSP per sequence hit, which prevents usage limit errors from occurring when a sequence search returns a large number of hits.
• Fixed the display of patent bibliographic information when on the Sequences tab of individual patents.
• Fixed the display of citation phase/category on the Cited Works tab of individual patents.
• Fixed profile image import from LinkedIn linked services.
• Fixed chart titles on Lens Reports.
• Fixed the default theme used in the Lens Profiles bulk claim modal.
• Corrections to the Italian localisation.
• Fix the display of titles and authors in the search results table view.

API & Data Improvements

Patent data:

• Updated the CPC and IPC classification schemas to the latest versions (CPC version 2025.01, IPC version 2025.01)

Scholarly Works data:

• Added the date_published_sort searchable index field. This is the date of publication used for sorting and filtering and includes partial publication dates that have been converted to a complete date. Partial dates are set to the end of the month/year.
• The ROR Schema v2.1 is now supported.
• Removed DOI-based records for Oxford Dictionary terms.

Lens API (version 2.14.0):

• Added retraction_update object and fields to the Scholarly Works API response. The retraction update fields include retraction_updates.reasons, retraction_updates.update_nature, retraction_updates.notes, retraction_updates.updated and retraction_updates.urls.
• Added a ui_default field for Query String Based Queries in the Scholarly Works API to replicate the search behaviour for string queries in the user interface.
• Added the date_published_sort request field to the Scholarly Works API.
• Improved API error messages, providing more context for debugging.
• Added support for Expand by Family to the patent API.
• Added support for histogram aggregations in the aggregation API for the following fields:
  • Scholarly works: patent_citation_count, scholarly_citation_count, reference_count.
  • Patents: cited_by.patent_count, reference_cited.patent_count, reference_cited.npl_resolved_count, reference_cited.npl_count.

For guidance navigating the API, please check the API Documentation, and to report bugs/issues, usability related questions, or to request features, please use our GitHub issue tracker.

Interested in supporting the sustainability of The Lens?

• Contact your library, research office or technology transfer and commercialization teams, and let them know about Lens for Institutions and the Institutional Toolkits.
• If you need to use Lens.org for commercial uses, please comply with Lens Terms of Use by either subscribing to an Enterprise Toolkit, or if you are a sole practitioner or SME, an individual commercial use license. See account and pricing options. If you need more than 4 seats or have other special circumstances, please contact us at support@lens.org.
• Do you know someone who would be interested in The Lens? Share a search or collection with them, or suggest that they register for our newsletter here.

Interested in helping us improve?

• Collective Action needs connected actors. The Collective Action Project provides a number of different activities for all stakeholders to participate in collective problem solving. See how you can participate.
• Are you supportive of The Lens mission and interested in volunteering your expertise and time to support The
  Lens? We welcome expressions of interest. Please contact us at support@lens.org. We are happy to learn more about your skill sets and see if there is a good fit of skills and timing to contribute to The Lens.
• If you have published using Lens tools or data, or created an application using the API or data from the Lens, please share your work with us so we can share it with others on Lens Labs to help improve The Lens as a public resource.
• Share your use case with us and explore how The Lens can help you and keep sending us your feedback on The Lens features and functionality.

The Lens is a public good project run by Cambia, a global social enterprise that is committed to making the innovation process more transparent, inclusive and effective for those seeking to solve problems and make a social impact and thus, we welcome your active engagement, participation, and support.