UB Academic Community has several discrete components that are searched independently. In addition to information about faculty expertise, there are separate hyperlinks to information about university facilities (research centers and instrumentation), grants awarded to UB by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and UB inventions (under development).

Faculty members may add their profiles at any time using Netscape. The on-line questionnaire includes several pick lists (such as UB schools and departments) to expedite the process. Once entries have been completed and reviewed, they are submitted electronically. Submissions are reviewed by the university and the Community of Science before being added to the database, a process that takes about two weeks.

To protect the integrity of a faculty member's entry, two passwords are needed before an existing profile can be accessed and revised. Passwords may be obtained, if needed, from the Office of the Vice President for Research by sending a message via the e-mail address hyperlink provided on the UB Academic Community main page. Faculty members receive a reminder e-mail message if they have not updated their profiles in a year.

The Community of Science homepage is found at http://cos.gdb.org. Links to this homepage from UB Wings are found at "Faculty & Staff-Research" and from the UB Academic Community. Resources accessible on the Community of Science include information comparable to that in the UB Academic Community for more than 100 participating universities and research centers. In addition, the Community of Science publishes searchable World Wide Web versions of federal grants and grant opportunities, the Commerce Business Daily, the Federal Register and the U.S. Patents Citation database.