find-experts-nz

name	find-experts-nz
description	Discover New Zealand experts by topic across public sources — the OpenAlex and Crossref scholarly graphs, Wikidata, ORCID, and university "Find an Expert" directories (University of Auckland, Massey). Use when you need a citable candidate shortlist of who could speak to a research question — expert matching, "find an expert", verifying a finding, or building an SME/advisory candidate list. Returns ephemeral shortlists from public data only — discovery is not consent and output is never a contact list.
license	MIT
compatibility	Requires Python 3.10+ and network access for live data
metadata	{"thecolab.category":"education","thecolab.source_owner":"OpenAlex and contributing directories","thecolab.source_type":"mixed","thecolab.auth":"none","thecolab.access_mode":"public-api","thecolab.data_class":"public","thecolab.writes":"false","thecolab.browser":"false","thecolab.risk":"low","thecolab.cache_ttl":"24h","thecolab.schema_version":"1","thecolab.skill_type":"public-api","thecolab.pack":"nz-public-data","thecolab.source_url":"https://api.openalex.org","thecolab.allowed_domains":"academics.aut.ac.nz,api.crossref.org,api.openalex.org,en.wikipedia.org,people.wgtn.ac.nz,pgdb-api.pgdb.co.nz,profiles.auckland.ac.nz,pub.orcid.org,query.wikidata.org,researchers.lincoln.ac.nz,researchprofiles.canterbury.ac.nz,www.irpnz.co.nz,www.justice.govt.nz,www.massey.ac.nz,www.mcnz.org.nz,www.otago.ac.nz,www.waikato.ac.nz,www2.pgdb.co.nz","thecolab.last_verified":"2026-07-19","thecolab.health":"healthy","thecolab.maintainer":"@adam91holt"}

Find Experts (NZ)

Goal

Turn a research topic into a ranked, citable shortlist of NZ-affiliated experts — who has published on this, where they're based, with links to public profiles. Keyless, read-only queries across two scholarly graphs (OpenAlex + Crossref) plus ORCID. Searching both broadens the range beyond universities into Crown Research Institutes (NIWA, Manaaki Whenua, ESR…) and government science (e.g. MPI), whose authors OpenAlex's institution filter often misses. Python stdlib only.

Use this when

• A stream/finding flags an expertise gap and you need candidate people who could verify it.
• You're building a candidate list for a consented SME / advisory network.
• You want to corroborate a surprising claim by finding who researches it in NZ.
• You need a public, machine-readable link (OpenAlex id / ORCID iD) for reproducible provenance.

Do not use this for

• Building or storing a contact list. Discovery is not consent. Output is an ephemeral shortlist for a human steward to review — never a mailing list, never auto-contacted, never persisted as a candidate registry.
• Finding practitioners via search — OpenAlex/Crossref index authors, so they find academics, not the tradesperson or adviser. Use the register command for practitioners in a professional register, or the org axis (see references) for those in none.
• Any personal-data workflow. Emails and addresses are out of scope by design; this skill returns names, affiliations, and public profile links only.

Workflow

1. Resolve the topic (optional but sharper): topics "<fuzzy topic>" returns OpenAlex topic ids. Pick the closest and pass it as --topic-id T##### to search.
2. Search for NZ-affiliated authors: search "<topic>" [--topic-id T#####]. Ranked by number of matching works then recency. --country, --since, --limit.
3. Profile a promising candidate: author <OpenAlex-id|ORCID> --works 5 for citation counts, h-index, affiliation history, topics, recent papers.
4. Cross-check via ORCID: orcid <iD> for self-declared employment and keywords.
5. Hand the shortlist to a human steward. A human decides who (if anyone) to approach; a human always presses send. This skill stops at discovery.

Commands

Run via python3 scripts/cli.py <command>:

• search TOPIC [--source openalex|crossref|wikidata|both|all] [--topic-id ID] [--institution IDS] [--org-type TYPE] [--country NZ] [--since YEAR] [--sample N] [--limit N] [--json] — ranked NZ-affiliated experts on the topic. both = OpenAlex+Crossref (default); all = also Wikidata. Experts found in more sources rank highest. --topic-id, --institution, --org-type are OpenAlex-only. wikidata finds notable NZ experts (people with a Wikidata item) across any institution — including portals with no API — matched by field of work; NZ-only, soft-fails if WDQS is rate-limiting.
• directory QUERY [--uni SLUG] [--limit N] [--json] — search a university "Find an Expert" directory (default --uni auckland; also massey) for named academics with curated expertise tags, title, department, and profile URL. Directory data includes staff who don't publish much and the expertise they chose to be found by. Contact details are deliberately never collected.
• unis [--json] — list supported university directories (api) and roadmap ones.
• register QUERY [--which pgdb|legalaid|irpnz|mcnz] [--limit N] [--json] — search a professional register for named practitioners — the tier scholarly sources miss. pgdb (plumbers/gasfitters/drainlayers, by name), legalaid (MoJ legal-aid lawyers, by name or practice area), irpnz (rural professionals / farm advisers, by name/role/ firm), mcnz (register of doctors, by name). Contact details are never collected.
• registers [--json] — list supported professional registers.
• institutions QUERY [--type TYPE] [--country NZ] [--limit N] [--json] — resolve NZ universities, CRIs, companies, and government bodies to OpenAlex institution ids. --type company lists R&D-active NZ companies; feed an id to search --institution. Types: education, company, government, facility, nonprofit, healthcare, other.
• topics QUERY [--limit N] [--json] — resolve a fuzzy topic to OpenAlex topic ids.
• author ID [--works N] [--json] — author profile by OpenAlex id (A…) or ORCID iD.
• orcid ID [--json] — public ORCID record: name, bio, keywords, employment history.

--json is supported on every command.

Sources

• OpenAlex: https://api.openalex.org (works, authors, topics). Keyless. Setting OPENALEX_MAILTO=[e-mail] joins the faster "polite pool" (also used as Crossref's mailto, optional).
• Crossref: https://api.crossref.org/works (works + author affiliations). Keyless.
• Wikidata Query Service: https://query.wikidata.org/sparql (NZ academics by field of work). Keyless, CC0. Notable-only; rate-limited (soft-fails when throttled).
• University directories (directory): University of Auckland (/api/users) and Massey (Solr expert search). Keyless. Massey returns email/phone; the skill drops them and emits expertise only.
• Professional registers (register): PGDB plumbers/gasfitters/drainlayers, MoJ Legal Aid lawyers, IRPNZ rural professionals, MCNZ register of doctors. Keyless. PGDB/IRPNZ/legal-aid expose contact details; the skill drops them.
• ORCID public API: https://pub.orcid.org/v3.0 (record). Keyless.

Reaching beyond academics

search/directory find published or directory-listed people. For practitioners and organisations — the beekeeper, the aged-care provider — discover the organisation first, then a human invites it. Compose these existing skills (see references/guide.md):

• nzbn-register / companies-office-nz — find businesses by name; directors, industry classification.
• charities-services-nz — NGOs by sector/activity taxonomy, public officer roles, grant-making signals.

To target a specific university or company, use institutions then search --institution <id> (or --org-type company) — all keyless via OpenAlex. More university directories can be added under directory as each portal's public JSON search endpoint is identified — see references/guide.md.

Notes

• Stdlib-only, read-only. Uses the shared nzfetch helper, so a transient bot-wall is reported as network error (exit 2), not a crash.
• Never fabricate: every field is returned verbatim from a public API payload.
• NZ affiliation is filtered on authorships.institutions.country_code — an author with only a historical NZ affiliation may still surface; check author output.
• See references/guide.md for the consent/ethics boundary, the tier model (where different kinds of experts actually live), and query recipes.