Wednesday, June 30 at 11:00 EDT
LG members:
Paul Albert, Robert Cartolano, Tom Cramer, Anna Guillaumet, Doug Hahn, Christian Hauschke, Anthony Helm, Bruce Herbert , Damaris Murry 
Terrie Wheeler
LYRASIS:
Laurie Gemmill Arp, Robert Miller, Michele Mennielli
Regrets:
Federico Ferrario,@Mike Conlon
= Secretary
Connection Information
Zoom connection information is available in the Outlook invitation.
Meeting Minutes
Announcements:
- New Technical Lead signed
Bruce: Damaris and Christian put together a search committee and found a great candidate for our technical lead position. Sincere thanks to Damaris, Christian, and Laurie for recruiting exceptional candidates, and making this hire.
Damaris: With the emphasis on diversity, we saw three different ways that this position could have gone, and everyone was very pleased with this approach and its outcome.
Bruce: There will be some time when the new technical lead will overlap with Brian.
Brian: Yes, the overlap will be three weeks in August.
Christian Hauschke (via chat): Robert, please forward our appreciation to Laurie!
Robert Miller (via chat): Christian - I’ll be glad too. For the benefit of everyone on this call, we have been following this process for the past 12 months. We have hired 12 new staff. we have had in 10 of the 12 hires at least one person from an underrepresented community included in the FINAL round of hiring. We are so pleased that we have had 6 merit-based hires that are from underrepresented communities. So it does work and we have a broader, better, more talented team as a result
Damaris Murry (via chat): That's great news, Robert.
- EuroCRIS MOU
Bruce: The next announcement is the status of the EuroCRIS MOU with VIVO as discussed previously (Bruce shares MOU on screen). Anna, can you talk about this in more detail?
Anna Guillaumet– the Objective is to cooperate on standards going forward. We will also add that each group will have participation in the other group’s conference. We can also consider hybrid conferences if we cannot attend in person. I will send the MOU out to group, and if we all agree, we will sign it.
Terrie: Would you like me to send out a ballot to vote on the MOU, or would you like to take a vote on it now?
Bruce: Let’s vote now. We have all had a chance to review this during previous meetings. Everyone who agrees, let me know by using your reaction tool. [Waits a minute.]. Thanks everyone, the vote passes.
Secretary's note: The full VIVO-EuroCRIS MOU is found here.
Discussion Items
- Lyrasis Working Group with resulting white paper
Bruce: I pitched the idea of developing a working group of Lyrasis projects to spec out interoperability requirements for various Lyrasis software so they can work together more seamlessly and identify these requirements in a white paper. Currently there is an outline or a charge for this group, which I will share for the minutes. After reviewing this charge, I welcome comments, concerns, thoughts, or other reactions to this interoperability idea.
Lyrasis Interoperability Working Group Charge: We propose to recruit a small, ad hoc project team that explores the current status of system interoperability among LYRASIS systems and provides recommendations for future software development. We ask that the ad hoc project team complete their report by May of 2022, if at all possible.
Secretary's note: full minutes from Lyrasis Interoperability Working Group, including charge, is here.
Robert M: The timeliness of this proposal is really important. We just received a $5M award from Knight Foundation. If the role that Lyrasis can play can help integrate profit and non-profit entities, this can be a huge win for Lyrasis. We are very happy that you are offering this proposal at this time, what a great contribution to the larger library community!
Robert M (in chat): Bruce this is a very great step forward! What are you calling the interoperating collaboration?
Robert Cartolano (in chat): +1 Robert - leverage community innovation and development and help us build out and scale out
Robert M (in chat): Nicely said Rob…:)
- VIVO Annual International Conference (virtual)
Bruce: The organizing team did a huge lift in bringing this community together for the VIVO annual International conference. The speakers were excellent, and we had the largest attendance of any VIVO Conference ever. Please let the organizing team of Mike, Anna, Christian and Ralph know how successful their efforts are!
Terrie: Will there be a post-conference survey?
Christian: The conference proceedings will be placed on the same TIB site as last year https://av.tib.eu/series/896/11th+international+vivo+conference+june+16+18+2020
Terrie: I experienced difficulty getting into the breakout sessions, and was not advised about how to do this until day 3 of the conference, despite repeated requests. Hence I missed much of the conference content. I am sharing this now so that this can be addressed next year if there will be no post-conference survey to elicit feedback for improvements. I would also like to know how soon these can be posted so I can review what I was forced to miss because of technology.
Christian: We are in the process of requesting permissions from the speakers to share their presentations, and we should have this completed in the next 2-3 weeks.
Paul: Presented the idea of opting out, or framing the request to speak with the understanding that the speaker would share their presentation afterwards, and if this is not something they would choose to do, they would advise early in the process, well in advance of their presentation. This is frequently how this is approached in other disciplines, as it is more efficient, saving follow-up time and avoiding delays with release of meeting content.
Christian replied to this saying that Europeans cannot do “opt-out”
Christian: Thanks to Tom Cramer for getting up in the middle of the night to moderate a conference. We may consider both virtual and physical conference in the future. Lots of room for improvement; but think that the virtual conference was far more successful in reaching attendees.
Tom Cramer: Wanted to know who attended and from where. This information can be very helpful to the future conference planning. Any discussion about next year’s conference. Will it be back in North America – maybe Texas?
Bruce: If interested in helping with next year’s conference, let Bruce know.
Anna: Could be organized by country online. Maybe for next year we do country sponsors?
Bruce: What does everyone else think about a virtual conference?
Anna: Maybe do both. Once an in-person conference, and one a virtual conference.
Bruce: Great. We all seem to agree about a hybrid conference.
Michele Mennielli (in chat): Adding on what Christian is saying about the VIVO Conference, a couple of weeks before that we hosted the first Spanish speaking VIVO virtual meeting and we had over 500 registrations from 20+ Spanish speaking countries
Michele (in chat): In a couple of weeks VIVO reached out to over 700 people
Christian (in chat): Yeah, that's really, really great, Michele!
Anna (in chat): that's right! great!!
Christian (in chat): Plus ~110 Germans three months earlier. One lesson: Start earlier with planning. It was a bit chaotic in the end. I have 2 months of conference org vacation now.
Damaris (in chat): Michele, is there a list of which institutions participated in the Spanish speaking meeting?
Michele (in chat): @Damaris: yes, I added the list to the Governance Drive folder
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5Y542pfErO0F6vUYTOTsS0AoN8WjjFuzTCTsiGOT0g/edit#gid=0 In that list there are only the contacts who agreed to be contacted after the event
(502 agreed to be contacted - the full list was 590ish)
Damaris (in chat): Excellent, thank you!
Christian (in chat): Didn't our new/future platinum member offer to host the VIVO Conference?
Tom (in chat): We had lots of discussions on Expert Finder Systems forum compared to VIVO. Do we have a sense of how that event has evolved compared to VIVO conf?
Anthony Helm (in chat): I feel like there is still sufficient uncertainty (health-wise) to go virtual at least once more
Anna (in chat): I agree with Anthony
Christian (in chat): +1 Anthony. Plus: No complaints about conference food if it's virtual.
Tom Cramer (in chat): @Terrie is that Research Intelligence proposal available?
Christian (in chat): Interoperability with ORCID is one of the top prios from basically everyone I talk to.
Paul (in chat): Hi Tom. I have a version of the application but it's not the final one. @Bruce could circulate.
- VIVO LG Officer Changes
Bruce: Next topic is VIVO LG officer change in voting time and change in officer terms. Terrie, can you discuss the results of our vote? (Bruce shares screen with proposed changes highlighted in red on screen)
Terrie: We discussed a proposal to change our officers’ terms and there is no longer a requirement to step down for a year in between service. The changes are in bold red as you see on the screen, and replace the words crossed out. The vote was 9 supporting the changes, and 0 opposing them. Hence the vote carries, and these changes will be made on the VIVO site. Elections will be held in the fall, which will give organizations who join July 1 an opportunity to run for office if they so desire.
Processes
- Elections for three Community Members and the Bronze representative conclude by the end of May September.
- In early June, October, planning begins for the new LG starting in July: November:
- The current Chair announces the new LG members.
- The Secretary invites the group to the first meeting of the year during the last week in July. November
- The Chair asks the group for nominations for the new Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer; self-nominations are encouraged.
- The Secretary announces the election dates to the group.
- Nominations stay open for the month of June. October. The Chair checks with each nominee to ensure they are willing to serve.
- The election is open from July October 1 to 15 or thereabouts. The new officers are announced after the election is closed. The former Chair can provide an orientation for the new officers if necessary.
- The new officers are in place to facilitate the first meeting of the new term.
Secretary's note: These changes shown above have now been made on the VIVO Officers Wiki Page: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/VIVO/Leadership+Group+Officers
- VIVO-in-a-Box Proposal Status
Bruce: Our next topic is the VIVO-in-A-Box proposal status (based on feedback)
Bruce: We have not received any negative feedback on this proposal so far in the VIVO LG or in the VIVO Task Forces or Interest Groups. We are now planning a VIVO Town Hall sometime in July. We will get the date to you and to the entire VIVO Community shortly. Additionally, we are organizing groups to plan what the project entails. Trying to get all groups to act on this proposal, to include marketing, requirements, etc.
Secretary's note: Complete VIVO-in-a-box proposal is found here.
- Proposed VIVO Roadmap for next Year
Bruce: Our next topic is the Proposed VIVO Roadmap, which will cover the next year or so (Bruce again shares screen)
VIVO Roadmap
Usability and Utility
- VIVO Scholar (new UI) released 2020
- VIVO-In-A-Box (simple versión)
- Research Intelligence – Lyrasis Catalyst Grant to créate a research intelligence system that would come from the knowledge graph that VIVO produces. (See approved application.)
Internationalization
- VIVO 1.12.0 released!
Interoperability
- Collaboration with EuroCris to align ontologies
- Enhance interoperability with Dspace, Fedora, & ORCID
Brian: Development group has proposed these items (Development group priorities). What do people consider the priorities for their own institutional use? What will people be willing to work on – development wise? The Development group is revisiting the closest thing we have to a technical roadmap, which is the document developed at the architectural fly-in. This document is still relevant today, we need to focus some efforts to moving this document forward. Critical discussion yesterday on what is the standard approach to this, so that we can all work on the same standard code-base.
Christian (in chat): This is an extremely valuable effort to get insights into dev priorities in all the VIVOs around the globe, thanks Brian!
Bruce: I’d be interested in folks who have chased scholarly infrastructure grants; could we get grant funding to do some of the things that Brian has highlighted? Tom and Rob C, you have experience chasing grant money in this arena. Any comments?
Robert C (in chat): +1 to grant to accelerate. Accelerate research, increase and amplify impact, COVID landscape demonstrates needs for speed to accelerate research efforts
Christian (in chat): EU will spend ~60 million Euro on Research infrastructure, mostly around European Open Science Cloud. There has to be some VIVO money in there.
Robert C (in chat): Open science to accelerate research
Robert M: If we can tie things to DEI and to for profit companies, we might be able to identify grant dollars that may be able to accomplish this.
Damaris: Very interested in the Research Intelligence.
Anthony: Had to focus most of resources on in-house priorities, but expect we can continue these discussions at Brown regarding the VIVO in a Box this fall. We are looking to have another division on campus at Brown to share the work and responsibility. Working with another potential partner at Brown right now.
Bruce: Had a request from Boulder to go in the other direction (e.g. away from having VIVO centralized in Vice Provost’s Office), and focus the system more on the library.
Tom: A tremendous opportunity for VIVO to be more interoperable. Looking for more modularization in VIVO. Looking to augment what they purchase from a vendor.
Tom (in chat): @Terrie is that Research Intelligence proposal available?
Secretary's note: The full proposal is linked under VIVO Roadmap/Usability and Utility/Research Intelligence (above in minutes).
Christian (in chat): Interoperability with ORCID is one of the top prios from basically everyone I talk to.
Paul (in chat): Hi Tom. I have a version of the application but it's not the final one. @Bruce could circulate.
Bruce: VIVO is becoming the aggregator at Texas A&M. Then we find organizations around campus who are using this. The management of research intelligence – possibly write a white paper making VIVO the center of an open source data harvesters?
Rob C: Now is the time to make VIVO the center of an open source set of data sources to accelerate sharing of research intelligence.
Christian: Open Aire is a probable source for collaboration. This is basically complete; all we need is an API.
Tom: Supports the Open Aire proposal; primarily used in Europe now, but we could introduce that into the US via an augmented VIVO platform.
Robert M (in chat): +1 to Tom
Bruce: You could make the case for VIVO and Open Aire, couldn’t you Robert?
Robert M: Yes, this would be a great opportunity.
Robert C (in chat): +1 to enhance interoperability
Hahn, Douglas (in chat): All, I have to run to my next meeting. Good job all!
Damaris (in chat): I think there could be a stronger connection between research intelligence and fundraising.
Robert M (in chat): Nothing like a crisis to accelerate future actions and plans
Anna (in chat): yes, we are here and vaccinated thanks to open science mainly
Robert C (in chat): +1 Anna
Michele M (in chat): https://guidelines.openaire.eu/en/latest/
Rob C: Activity around COVID and immediacy around research. If we can make the connection with ongoing research activity, and seeking to accelerate their research efforts, how can VIVO facilitate this?
Bruce: This roadmap seems good, feels good.
Terrie: Will we put timelines around this roadmap?
Bruce: Yes, you will make sure that I do that.
Bruce: Please contact me if you have other ideas or recommendations for the VIVO Roadmap.
How can we align committers with project initiatives? Any other Suggestions?
The meeting adjourned at 12:02
