Navigation:

Frequently Asked Questions

1) How do I get my profile completeness to 100%?

Here's the ways to get to 100%: Registration 25%, Location 10%, Select a Discipline 10%, Education 10%, Work Experience 10%, Join a Group 10%, Add Photo 10%, Start a Blog 10%, Every 5 Connections 5%.

2) How do I change my visibility, password, or email address?

Go to My Account, located in the top right corner or within your profile. You can change your email address, password, birth date visibility, and you can change your privacy mode, external visibility and connection visibility.

3) What if I don't want other users to know I'm looking at their profile?

Simply go to your settings within My Account and change your external visibility settings. You can turn off completely or modify to anonymous characteristics.

4) How do I use my homepage?

Our technology mines your profile to bring relevant information directly to your homepage. To see the most recent, relative information within your focus areas you can toggle between the News, Publications, and Events, as well as the Q&A, Blogs, and Reviews. We have also developed tools to bring you the Newest Members and Groups, Visitors to your Profile, People with Similar Interests, and Network Activity. You have the power to customize your homepage by adding tools/widgets and moving modules.

5) Can I invite my science colleagues to join LabRoots? How?

Absolutely! You can invite others manually, import your email address book or other social media contacts, outlook contacts, or spreadsheets. First click on the Invite Others button which is located next to your photo on the top of the navigation bar. Then either enter email addresses manually or click on the blue "Add from My Address Book" button. After you have imported the email addresses, you can either send our default invitation message or personalize your message.

6) Is there a messaging system?

Yes, you can manage your communication with other users through our integrated messaging system. See inbox on your navigation bar. You must be connected with the user prior to sending a message.

7) Can I send a message to any user?

After you have made a connection with a user, you can send them a message.

8) How do I connect with other users?

Go to users profile and hit the orange Connect button. You will be given the option to send a personalized message to the user or send the default connection message. The message will then be sent to the user's inbox requesting to connect with you. If the user accepts your connection request, you will receive a message back informing you that the connection has been accepted.

9) How do I find a scientist or information that may be able to help me with me research?

Great question! There are two ways to go about this. First, you can use the search tool in the top right corner. Simply enter your key word(s) and use the drop down to narrow your search to People, Q&A, Blogs, Reviews, Publications, Jobs, Events, News, or Groups. Or within each feature you can either use the Browse by Discipline tool at the top of each page or manually sort through the content until you find what it is you're looking for.

10) What is "People with Similar Interests"?

Via our data mining technology, we are mining every profile to bring users with similarities together, such as work experience, educational background, location, and similar research focus.

11) How do I add Tools and Widgets to customize my homepage?

Go to the navigation bar and select Tools. Browse the list of useful tools/widgets and choose the tool(s) that you want to add to your homepage. Simply click on the "Add to my Homepage" button and the tool/widget will appear on your homepage. Now go to your homepage to drag the tool/widget or existing modules to the places you would like them. You can minimize or click on the X to remove the tools/widgets at any time.

12) Do you offer an RSS Feed tool?

Absolutely. Click on Tools from the navigation bar and select the "Add to homepage" button under the RSS Feeds option. Now the RSS Feed aggregator is located on your homepage where you can add as many feeds as you please.

13) What is the Vote link for?

Some of the features such as: Reviews, News, Blogs, Publications, and Events allow our users to express their opinion of the content by voting. Each user can vote once per content piece. Content with multiple votes are considered popular to the users.

14) What is Share This?

ShareThis is a tool which allows users to share content with others outside of the LabRoots website. When you find interesting content worth sharing, simply click on the ShareThis link. A pop-up window will appear allowing you to share the content via email or posting to other forms of social media such as Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us, Myspace, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and many more.

15) How can I make my Group private?

The group owner can go into the Manage Group tab where the owner can select the radio button entitled "Approval Needed to Join Group". When a new user attempts to join the group, a message is sent to the group owner for approval first.

16) What if I have a question? How do I submit a question?

Click on Q&A Forum from the navigation bar. Click on the "Ask a Question" tab. Submit your question.

17) When I find content but have comments, how do I initiate discussion?

If your comments are directly related to a question in our Q&A, simply click on answer. Or if you would like to comment on any of the user or automated content within the site, you can click on the Comment link under the content.

18) What is the Publications feature and how does it work?

The Publications feature is a tool designed to give you access to thousands of publications and libraries from the most prestigious sources (PubMed, IEEE, NASA, Gartner Group, just to name a few). We have integrated the API (Application Programming Interface) of these sources as a service to our users, providing exclusive and unlimited access to most. Your homepage offers the most relevant publications based on your profile, while the publications feature, via the navigation bar provides a database of thousands. In addition you can also upload your own publication or other publications you're interested in. You can save publications to My Publications to have at your fingertips for later use.

19) How do I search for an Event?

You have two ways of searching for an event. You can use the search tool, located on the top right of every page, by entering key words and using the drop down, selecting Events. Or you can go to Events on the navigation bar and manually review the list or use the Browse by Discipline tool.

20) How do I find a job?

Relevant jobs, based on the user's profile, are listed on each user's homepage. A larger database of jobs can be found in the Jobs feature (portal located on the navigation bar) for users to browse. The advanced search can be utilized by users to find jobs meeting specific criteria. Users can also post new jobs seeking candidates within the science community.