For years, we've worked to make it easier for researchers to build an online presence. But what if the answer isn't a better website? What if it's something entirely different?

OpenScholar's mission has always been the same: to help researchers solve society's biggest challenges, faster, by making it easier to attract funding, talent, and collaboration opportunities.

For years, we've pursued that mission through websites—giving researchers a way to showcase their work, increase their visibility, and connect with the people and organizations that can help move their research forward.

Our vision has always extended beyond individual websites. We've wanted to create a connected research ecosystem where researchers can discover one another, institutions can showcase their collective expertise, and funders and other stakeholders can easily find the people and projects they want to support.

But for years, one challenge has stood in the way.

The Challenge? Adoption.

Even with easy-to-use templates designed specifically for researchers, websites take time to set up, populate with content, and maintain.

We've seen labs, centers, and departments flourish on the OpenScholar platform. These websites often have the benefit of research assistants, administrators, or dedicated teams who can invest the time needed to build and maintain them.

Individual researcher websites have been a different story.

It isn't that researchers don't want greater visibility. They do. But between conducting research, writing grants, publishing papers, mentoring students, and everything else competing for their attention, maintaining a personal website rarely makes it to the top of the list.

And we understand why.

Researchers want the benefits of an online presence. They don't necessarily want another website to manage.

Then Along Came AI.

By now, most of us have experienced the remarkable capabilities of AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude. They're powerful, sometimes controversial, and changing how we think about work.

For OpenScholar, AI has opened the door to solving a problem we've been working on for years.

Not by making websites even easier to build.

By removing the need for researchers to build them in the first place.

Introducing OpenScholar Research Hubs.

Research Hubs: Visibility Without the Work

Research Hubs give individual researchers the online visibility they need, without the time and effort traditionally required to create and maintain a website.

Our AI-powered Hub Generator does the heavy lifting, drawing on a researcher's existing body of work to create a structured, informative profile of their research, expertise, and interests.

Researchers simply review their Hub, make any necessary edits, and they're ready to go.

That's it.

No learning a website platform. No building pages. No ongoing pressure to publish updates or keep content fresh.

The Hub Generator does the work. Online visibility is the result.

But Research Hubs do much more than provide an online presence.

More Than a Website. A Connected Research Ecosystem.

Research Hubs are designed to make research easier to discover, connect, and fund.

Here's what makes them different:

• AI-generated, researcher-reviewed. Hubs are created using a researcher's existing body of work, reducing setup to a simple review process.
• Designed to stay relevant. Rather than requiring constant content updates, Hubs provide an evergreen overview of a researcher's work, with changes needed primarily when their research focus evolves.
• Consistent and easy to explore. Every Hub follows a common structure, making it easy for visitors to understand a researcher's expertise, research interests, and potential areas for collaboration or funding. Links to frequently updated sources like ORCID, PubMed, and Google Scholar provide access to their latest work.
• Connected to funding opportunities. Our funding matching service uses Hub information to identify relevant government and private funding opportunities, delivering personalized matches to researchers through their own dashboard.
• Visible to research administrators. Institutions gain a centralized view of their researchers, areas of expertise, and available funding opportunities.
• Built for discovery and collaboration. Researchers can discover colleagues with complementary expertise across departments, schools, and campuses—and connect with researchers at other institutions.
• Part of something bigger. As more researchers and institutions participate, Research Hubs help create the connected ecosystem we've envisioned from the beginning.

From Individual Websites to Institutional Visibility

The shift from websites to Research Hubs isn't simply about saving researchers time.

It's about what becomes possible when an institution can give every researcher a meaningful online presence, rather than relying on those who have the time, resources, or inclination to build a website.

Imagine a university where every researcher is discoverable. Where administrators can see the breadth of expertise across their institution. Where researchers can find potential collaborators outside their own departments. Where funding opportunities can be matched to people automatically.

And where none of this depends on individual researchers becoming website administrators.

That's the opportunity Research Hubs create.

The Goal Hasn't Changed. The Way We Get There Has.

Traditional websites will continue to play an important role for labs, centers, departments, and research initiatives that need the flexibility to publish and manage a wide range of content.

But for individual researchers, we've come to believe there's a better way.

With Research Hubs, OpenScholar is helping institutions move toward comprehensive researcher visibility and adoption almost immediately—without placing another administrative burden on their faculty.

It's a meaningful shift in how we think about research visibility, and one that brings us closer to the mission we've had all along.

Helping researchers spend less time managing their online presence and more time doing what matters: advancing research, building collaborations, securing funding, and solving society's biggest challenges.

Maybe the question was never how to get more researchers to build websites.

Maybe it was how to give every researcher the benefits of one—without requiring them to build it.