
In this release, we are pleased to launch Dynamic Collections and Authorship Recording.
N.B. We are no longer supporting Internet Explorer, all other modern and standards compliant browsers are still supported (e.g. Firefox, Microsoft Edge based on Chromium, Chrome, Safari, Opera).
Dynamic Collections:

New Dynamic Collection modal and Save as Collection toolbar button (inset).
Dynamic Collections are a highly requested new feature that allows you to keep your Lens collection up-to-date with each data release. Dynamic Collections are automatically updated when new works matching the linked saved query are added to the search index, allowing you to present up-to-date data and dashboards. Users can review newly added items with email alerts and links in the notifications.
There are a few ways to create a Dynamic Collection, the simplest being the new "Save as Collection" button in the scholar/patent search results toolbar. With a couple clicks, you can turn your current search into an automatically updated Dynamic Collection. You can also create a Dynamic collection from a new or existing collection. Upon creating a new Lens collection, just link your search query to that collection and turn on the notification alert in your work area, and voilà, your collection becomes a Dynamic Collection. Or if you have existing collections, you can link all related saved queries to the collection to convert it to a Dynamic Collection and automatically keep it up-to-date. For more information see the support page.
Recording Authorship and Sync to ORCID:

New Authorship tooltip enabling recording of authorship from individual scholarly works.

Claimed Work tab in the user’s Work Area showing recorded patent inventorship and authorship of scholarly works, and the Sync with ORCID action available from the Set Actions box.
Since 2016, The Lens has enabled inventors to record their inventorship of patents and sync them to their ORCID record. In this release, we now offer users the ability to easily record authorship of their scholarly works and sync them to their ORCID record as well.
To record your authorship on an individual scholarly work, users need to be logged in and have a linked ORCID account. Once you have found the work you wish to record authorship of, you can claim it from the author tooltips on the summary tab.
Once you have recorded your authorship, the work will be synced to your ORCID record and the work will be updated to show authorship has been recorded in The Lens. The work will also appear on your Claimed Work tab in your Work Area. For more information on recording authorship and inventorship, see the support page.
Other changes and improvements
- A new "Table" view is now available on the scholarly and patent results page, with customisable columns and layout.
- Improved the author facet search algorithm to improve author search results
- Added buttons to create new dashboards from the dashboards tab in the Work Area.
- Added a "Select All" checkbox to the Collections and Saved Queries tabs in the Work Area.
- Improved the display and functionality of notifications from the user’s Work Area sidebar. The notification window is now scrollable and notifications can be dismissed individually or by clearing all un-viewed notifications.
New customisable results "Table" view.
Additional minor changes based on user feedback:
- UI and UX improvements including updated tooltips and updated collection header design and user settings.
- Added Cites Patent Count (backward patent citations) field to the patent export.
- Stop metrics Carousel autoscroll.
- Auto focus on title input in the Save Query modal.
- Hide author facet filters options by default.
Fixes:
- Reinstated the patent number recogniser to support search for several variations of patent/publication numbers, with and without jurisdiction and kind codes. For example, patent number US 7654321 B2 can be found by searching the following variants of the patent number: 7654321, 7,654,321, US7654321, US_7654321, US/7654321, US 7654321 B2, US 7,654,321 B2, and US_7654321_B2.
- In the summary article page, the “Citing Patents” toggle button on the citations histogram is now operational.
- Search history of PatSeq and PatCite activities is deleted for guest users and when users opt out of recording search history in their account page.
- In the search results page, the “Edit search” option defaults now to the Query Text Editor when the query can not be parsed into a structured search.
- When author identifiers are enabled, the display of listed authors in the facet search is now fixed.
- After logging in, users are redirected back to the previous page instead of returning to the homepage.
- Integrated the Subject Matter facets into the main facet aggregations request.
- Updated email validation to support new top level domains.
- Fixed the popup message in the Patent Family Timeline when using dark mode.
- Auto-sort now uses Date Published on Collections by default, and Relevance after querying within a Collection.
- The top search bar now works on the structured search page.
- Added support to auto-detect date filters when not specified in legacy URLs.
- Notes can now be created by guest users.
- Reinstated "Search within collection" label on search bar when viewing a collection.
- Reinstated "Inline Notes" on the patent summary tab (e.g. next to Claims, Inventors, etc.).
- Remove HTML encoding on work area item descriptions.
- Fixed the ‘Manage Saved Queries’ button on the Saved Queries sidebar, which now opens the Saved Queries in the users work area.
- Fix bug where clicking facet search input cleared auto-complete.
- Prevent modal windows from being dragged outside the browser window.
API & Data Improvements:
- The Lens Patent API is now in the Beta testing phase. A number of selected users will help in the testing. If you would like to be notified when version 1.0 of the Patent API is available, please Request Notification or email support@lens.org. Alternatively, please participate in this brief survey to help us design and build improved API's and web services that will be useful to you.
For guidance on navigating the Scholarly API, please check the online documentation, and to report bugs/issues, usability related questions, or to request features, please use our GitHub issue tracker. For general questions, please visit our Support Center to check out the latest tutorials or contact us at support@lens.org with your queries/comments.
Policies:
- With this release we’ve added a cookie notice and updated our Privacy Policy to make it easier to understand and to better describe the information we collect and how you can make use of your privacy rights. Please take a moment to review the updated policy.
Interested in helping us improve?
- Share your use case with us and explore how Lens can help you.
- Keep sending us your feedback on The Lens features and functionality.
- Get involved in Lens Labs and take action to improve a public resource.
- Register your interest in a public webinar on the Lens ReportsBETA and help us build the report builder facility
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.