Wednesday, February 24 at 11:00 EDT
LG members:
Paul Albert, Ann Beynon, Robert Cartolano, Mike Conlon, 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:
= Secretary
Connection Information
Zoom connection information is available in the Outlook invitation.
Agenda
Short Items
Reminder: The VIVO Conference Team is looking for Keynotes, June 23-25
Reminder: VIVO Architecture Diagrams Request – Bruce
- Add diagrams and short description (if possible) to https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FDQLM-nEBJ-6GjZNhcRVyc0RPMyjkFi1jMxcsVpbDKI/edit?usp=sharing
Kudos to Ann Beynon
VIAB proposal Status, Bruce (5 mins)
Discussion Items
- Sustainable finances – how many members do we need? Is this our ultimate goal as the leadership group?
- Hiring Andrew’s Replacement Update on Process, Laurie
- Welcome to Brian
- Long term goals for the community
- Discussion of long-term tech resources discussion (i.e. what skills we need July and going forward)
- Committee/Task Force Updates as available
- Ontology Report (Mike Conlon)
- Marketing/Committee TF report (Julia/Anna)
- Membership Committee (Terrie or Ann)
Meeting Minutes
Short Items
Bruce: Welcome and Reminders
Bruce: Reminder - The VIVO Conference Team is looking for Annual Conference Keynotes, June 23-25
Tom Cramer (in chat): I suggest Carly Robinson at the US Dept of Energy for a speaker. She is involved in OSTI, and they have emphasized uses of PIDs for all DOE grants, equipment, researchers and articles.
Bruce: Reminder - VIVO Architecture Diagrams Request
Add diagrams and short description (if possible) to https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1FDQLM-nEBJ-6GjZNhcRVyc0RPMyjkFi1jMxcsVpbDKI/edit?usp=sharing
Bruce: Kudos to Ann Beynon who joined Bruce to present at the International Forum for Expert Finders Systems, and then took the helm when Bruce (who was presenting) lost his internet connection due to the Texas winter storm.
Bruce: VIAB (VIVO in a Box) proposal Status, Bruce (5 mins) – no progress this month
Discussion Items
- Sustainable finances – how many members do we need? Is this our ultimate goal as the leadership group?
Laurie: Six institutions dropped their membership and one member downgraded, which is a loss of $32,000. One new member, UC Davis, joined at the Bronze Level ($1000). Laurie would like us to determine our long-term plan, so she can advise on what “sustainability” might look like for the VIVO Project. She notes that we have net assets of $60-70K that we have not dipped into yet, but that may have to happen shortly if we do not increase membership or find other revenue sources.
Rob Cartolano (in chat): Revenue can come in from different places: - membership, grants, service revenue.
Robert Miller (in chat): this is the time and moment for the pivot. If we can’t sell VIVO in a box...then our future is bleak. This is our moment. sell the future program.
Rob C. made a strong argument for VIVO in a Box. He gave two successful examples of open source projects where Columbia just has to pay a bill and others do the hosting and development: Fedora and more recently SimplyE, announced this week. He recommends that Lyrasis be used to host VIVO in a Box, and that all Columbia has to do is pay a bill for this to be hosted to Lyrasis. Part of their bill would be for hosting, the remainder for VIVO membership. As long as Columbia doesn’t have to hire developers, they are willing to pay for it. Many other schools and universities would be willing also.
Rob (in chat): I would love to be a “VIVO in a box” user - especially if we can connect our existing licensed resources like Scopus and Web of Science, etc. and just harvest these data for a discovery by our usersOpen ecosystem that provides data analytics, is what is desired by Columbia and so many other institutions. Columbia is willing to be a beta tester for VIVO in a box.
Rob (in chat): Columbia pays $25,000/year for ArchivesSpaces hosted at LYRASIS, my users are happy, and we get to use an open ecosystem product, integrated with our local systems. Win-win-win
Anthony Helm (in chat): Tell us what you really think, Rob! :-)
Rob (in chat): We need a high-level marketing tagline; something like “VIVO - Empowering the open research ecosystem”
Robert Miller (in chat): I read this as a positive...I’ll be glad to help on the VIVO in a box. not very excited about hanging on to the present path.
Robert Miller (in chat): Bye all, I have to leave. Good job Bruce! Good thoughts Rob!
Mike (in chat): I hadn’t heard that VIAB was a service. I had heard it was a low-cost local install. As a service it may have much more value but would require capitalization/staff to create and maintain sites.
Anthony (in chat): …and because it is “open source” it is easy to perceive it at “free” at an institutional level
Rob (in chat): VIAB can be both - similar to ArchivesSpace - you can run locally, or you can run hosted
Bruce (in chat): We have had discussion of a hosted solution for VIAB (VIVO in a Box) before, for the specific reasons stated by Robert
Demaris: VIVO is different things to different people. She values the RDF, others value it as a website, and others as a reporting tool.
Anthony Helm: VIVO is run by the library. He has pitched that this is of value to the Dean’s Office, Research, etc. Those benefitting the most are not currently supporting it, and he hopes to change this support locally.
Bruce: The American Universities collect data about student outcomes, and VIVO offers this.
Anna: VIVO in a box seems most appropriate for smaller institutions, and this would increase our membership.
Rob (in chat): +1 Anna - help smaller institutions, as well as other institutions who have to allocate local staff differently.
Ann Beynon (in chat): Right now, we are offering our services as a certified service provider (Clarivate) as an option for VIAB- hosting, implementation, data integration, etc.
Christian: TIB plans to collaborate with other institutions with mapping and installing. Data ingest is a problem, along with deduplication and aggregation. These are the biggest challenges. Who is owning what data, and where do I get it? Editorial roles are difficult. Rights and roles management are difficult. In Germany we have primarily public universities and funding, not philanthropy as in the US. I get a call from a new institution at least every two weeks that is interested in VIVO. Getting the data in, managed, and getting the data out is the need that universities express regarding VIVO. Having vendor support for open-source systems is important. Flexibility is very important.
Paul: Sarbajit has done a lot of great work dockerizing all of VIVO. I’m not clear the extent to which the larger community would appreciate taking advantage of this work. But if you are, have at it! The open-source code is available here: https://github.com/wcmc-its/vivo-docker
Beyond that, our main focus has been on building out ReCiter. The current limitations of ReCiter are that it is PubMed centric, and refactoring ReCiter to accept Web of Science data feeds will take a lot of work. But our main goal is to have ReCiter Publication Manager perform a variety of reporting and analytics functions such that it can become a full-fledged “research intelligence system” as Terrie is wont to say.
Ann: We just need to get people working on ReCiter to enable it to interact with Web of Science. Sarbajit and Benjamin Gross are available, but we need others too.
Christian (in chat): If you want to learn about going from Pure to VIVO, please consider visiting the German VIVO Workshop end of March. The Danish Technical University will present about https://nora.adm.dtu.dk/. That presentation will be in English. You can Register for free here: https://events.tib.eu/vivo-workshop-2021/registrierung/.
2. Hiring Andrew’s Replacement
Bruce: Welcome to Brian – Thanks to Brian for being willing to step up.
Brian: just about ready to announce the alpha release of VIVO. There has been a lot of effort by the developer team, and I am very excited about what we can accomplish in the next four months (Brian’s contract period).
Laurie: LYRASIS would like two or three people from leadership to work with on the process. Part of what Laurie needs to know is what the long-term goal should be for VIVO? Do we need a coordinator or a heads down developer, for example? There is a lot of opportunity to think about with this position. Bruce will coordinate involvement of the VIVO LG with position description writing and recruitment.
3. Committee/Task Force Updates as available
- Ontology Report
Mike: Bunch of different work in progress. Now working on an organizational ontology using ROR. Also working with various persistent identifier communities. Two challenges with ORCID – log in with ORCID ID, and now exchanging data with ORCID. These are ongoing topics of discussion.
Ann (in chat): If you aren't familiar with ROR- https://ror.org/
Tom Cramer (in chat): Has anyone we know done an integration of VIVO to ORCID? And has it live?
Christian (in chat): Getting ROR, DOI, ORCID from Datacite Commons is part of the TAPIR Project: https://projects.tib.eu/tapir/en/ - we are still in the beginnings.
2. Marketing/Committee TF report
Anna: One of the last things we are working on (under VIVO map) Community VIVO Sites to access the new map of VIVO sites. Anna provided a walk-through of the website. The TF is also working on an assessment of current VIVO users.
3. Membership Report
Ann Beynon: Membership update is as follows: The VIVO Project has a total of 17 institutional members, which breaks out accordingly:
- Platinum: 3
- Gold: 3
- Silver: 3
- Bronze: 6
- Copper: 2
Total Membership Revenue for FY2021 = $124,166
Service Providers (3 total)
- 1 Certified VIVO Partner (Clarivate)
- 2 Certified VIVO Contributors (Ontocole, Symplectic)
Total Service Provider Renenue for FY2021 = $24,500
Outreach Activities to Build Membership Base
NA user group meeting- January- building Wiki and Slack Channel to formalize. Access recordings here: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/VIVO/2021+North+American+Users+Meeting
- Building a user group in North America to keep interest and development going
- Spanish-speaking use group meeting upcoming
Expert Finder Systems Conference (Feb 11-March 18):
- Ann Beynon/Bruce Herbert presentation on VIVO at Expert Finder Systems forum- February 18
- Paul and Sarbijit on ReCiter February 25
- Ann and Julia Trimmer on vendor panel March 18
One-on-one efforts to welcome new VIVO users and introduce membership- ongoing
Bruce: Meeting adjourned at 12:02p
