Wednesday, August 25 at 11:00 EDT
LG members:
Paul Albert, Ann Beynon, Robert Cartolano, Mike Conlon, Anna Guillaumet, Doug Hahn, Christian Hauschke, Anthony Helm, Bruce Herbert , Dragan Ivanovic ,Damaris Murry 
Terrie Wheeler
LYRASIS:
Laurie Gemmill Arp, Robert Miller
Regrets:
Federico Ferrario,Tom Cramer,Michele Mennielli
= Secretary
Connection Information
Zoom connection information is available in the Outlook invitation
Meeting Minutes
Minutes for August 2021 VIVO Leadership Group
Announcements
- Open call for announcements
Robert Miller – observed that there is a lot more activity in the VIVO Community going on this year than in the past few years, and that is a credit to you, Bruce, and to the Leadership Group.
Bruce: Right system right time. Lot of attention being paid to RIM systems today.
Anthony Helm: Agree that there has been a lot of activity in the last year, and it has been a pleasure to be involved over this past 18 months. This is my last meeting, as I will be leaving Brown. Replacement is not yet determined, but Nora Dimmock, Brown’s Deputy UL, may pop in from time to time! (In chat): Her e-mail is nora_dimmock@brown.edu
(In chat – many wished Anthony well on his new adventure, and thanked him for his service to the VIVO LG.)
Laurie: Introducing our new tech lead, Dragan Ivanović, who has joined the meeting today. He has jumped right in with both feet and has gotten off to a great start. We are thrilled to have him.
Dragan: Looking forward to being here.
(In chat – many welcomed Dragan to the group.)
Discussion
- MOU with Eurocris formally signed. Next steps
Bruce (in lieu of Anna) – MOU has been signed, and this will enable us to work more closely with EuroCRIS, and will move our efforts with RIM systems forward. We will have an introductory organizing meeting with the EuroCRIS and VIVO Leadership as an open meeting to meet and establish our relationship going forward.
Mike: I’ve met all the signatories in Finland, so I don’t really have a need for an introductory meeting, but we do need an organizing meeting.
Christian: Dragan should be involved in this meeting as well.
Dragan: Mapping between SERIF and the VIVO Ontology is important. Maybe need to wait until the new SERIF ontology is out before we start our work.
Anna: I suggested an open meeting to collaborate, and would like very much for the leadership to meet each other to get our collaboration started. If I can tell the EuroCRIS board meeting how we would like to work together going forward when that board meets tomorrow, that would be helpful.
Bruce: Let’s identify the ontology leaders in both organizations and work together from there.
- Elections
Terrie: Below is the proposed schedule for elections. I’ve reviewed many VIVO wiki pages to come up with this overall schedule, which abides by the rules of the VIVO elections. Based on what I’ve read, I’ve worked this out so that we have approximately 9 days to two weeks for each step in the process.
Sept 1 – 10 Nominations for the Bronze representative election
Sept 13 – 22 Elections for the Bronze election
Sept 23-Oct 1 Nominations for the Community Member election
Oct 4 – 13 Elections for the Community Member election
Oct 14 – 22 Nominations for LG officers (Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Secretary)
Oct 25 - Nov 5 Elections for LG officers
Nov 8 – 16 Orientation, training
Nov 17 or Nov 24 First Leadership Group meeting with new officers and members (depending on whether we want to move up our Nov meeting due to American Thanksgiving – OK with me if we keep it on Nov 24)
List of Bronze members as of September, 2021:
George Washington University – Hannah Sommers, <hsommers@email.gwu.edu>
German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB)– Christian Hauschke, <christian.hauschke@tib.eu>
Florida International University - Bryan Cooper <bcooper@fiu.edu>
Technical University of Denmark – Mogens Sandfaer, <mosa@dtic.dtu.dk>
University of California at Davis – Vessela Ensberg, <vensberg@ucdavis.edu>
University of Idaho – Jeremy Kenyon, <jkenyon@uidaho.edu>
University of Lausanne (Switzerland) – Martin Vesely, <martin.vesely@unil.ch>
University of Quebec Montreal Libraries – Tristan Müller <muller.tristan@uqam.ca>
Mike Conlon (in chat): Can the schedule be posted? It sometimes takes a little time for people to be convinced they should run in an election.
Laurie Arp (in chat): yes, Mic is on vacation but is working with Cineca on this
Bruce (in chat): Where are good places to post it Mike - I assume it would be on the Wiki.
Mike (in chat): Yes wiki, and email to the community.
- Suggestions to improve the representation of the VIVO community in the leadership group
Bruce: After many conversations with various members of the VIVO community - some paying members, some not, but all active and productive in the community - I have collected a few points to propose to the LG to improve the electoral processes. The aim of the proposals is to improve the involvement of the community at large - not only but especially the developers - in the discussion and decision-making processes, and to recognise practical work on VIVO also through the possibility of committee participation.
The suggestions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t9yNNQ5oQi3mcehmHoCdmMT-0r58n9hUvI6yegK4Dsc/edit?usp=sharing
Existing rules: on membership:
Christian: Talked to developers, ontology group, from Germany, other countries, etc. Three main suggestions raised, as noted in the link above and minutes from last month.
Christian: One suggestion is that we have only one person per institution. Second suggestion is that have community at large members elected by the LG. Elected by community and not only by paid members. Third: VIVO committers group should have a dedicated representative in addition to the technical lead. We have had comments in the document, as well as at the last meeting. Damaris, would you like to speak? (pause). Well, Damaris indicated she had some concerns about what was in the proposal. She was not convinced that limiting membership to one person per institution limited the voices/viewpoints. And Julia Trimmer gave feedback in the proposal document indicating some concerns if we open voting to the entire VIVO community.
Terrie added from the proposal document: Regarding opening VIVO elections to the entire VIVO Community, Julia writes: “How would the LG know that voters are truly VIVO community members? Could I nominate myself and then ask all my friends, family, and neighbors to vote for me?” Regarding running an election for the Committers, Julia’s voice of experience is again heard. She observes “In general, the LG elections are complicated and require a lot of effort to administer. I'm not in favor of adding elections. Perhaps the Committers could send a representative but not vote; if so, they wouldn't need to be elected.”
Christian: I would like this person to have a vote.
Terrie described what she found in the definition of the VIVO LG membership page: “The VIVO Leadership Group is made up of Platinum Members, Members at other levels who are elected by peer contributors, community members, and representatives from institutions contributing at least 0.5 FTE development or other project-specific effort as approved by project leadership, reportable to the project and approved by project leadership.” It is noted on this page that currently because there are only 3 Silver members, that all Silver members are seated. Terrie noted that these guidelines allowed for developer membership without paying dues as long as the development work was a significant contribution back to the VIVO Core, ensuring that the VIVO Core was constantly developed and improved. The .5 FTE translates to half a full-time position, or at least 20 hours per week.
Christian: This is too hard to define. How do you know if someone is an expert coder who only takes five minutes to make a significant contribution, or someone who could take weeks to write something basic?
Terrie: Pull requests closed offer a measure, and the Technical Lead can determine if questions arise.
Christian: I do not think this is a measurable approach that makes any sense.
Terrie: Greater minds than mine came up with these guidelines, and they were voted for and adopted at a time when we required a unanimous vote for adoption. This is our current policy.
Paul: One of the discussion points from years past was that we want institutions to contribute money. Granting an institution a seat on the basis of code contributions may disincentivize them from making financial ones.
Mike: The guideline that code contributors can have seat on the Leadership group was established in the past, specifically for Quebec. It was not recognized. We need change, but not sure how to enact it.
Christian (in chat): I'm not clinging to the suggestions, too. Full agree with Mike. It's about recognition and openness.
Ann (in chat): One small change that may help related to our LG-membership conversation is to indicate which of the current members are community-elected on this page https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/VIVO/VIVO+Leadership
Ann: (from Benjamin who works on the committers group): Don’t think there are committers asking to be on leadership.
Christian: Talked to 2 committers and heard the opposite view. However, if we are more open to the community at large, then maybe committers don’t need to have representation.
Ann: Would this be put to a vote?
Christian: I would not feel comfortable with this at this time. I would prefer that someone who is a native English language speaker would edit the proposal.
Bruce: Would you like the LG to set up a working group to make up a proposal along these lines?
Christian: Yes, I think this would be a good approach.
Ann: I’d volunteer to be on this working group.
Ana: I would volunteer to be on this working group. I think some of these things may need more discussion, however.
Bruce: Are we OK to charge a small working group to discuss and come up with different ways to accomplish more inclusion, either within the rules or to tweak the rules slightly? Can you indicate this by a show of thumbs up?
LG members indicate acceptance of this proposal.
Bruce: Excellent. I also have proposed inviting TFs and WGs to contribute to the LG is another way to increase inclusion, and I would offer this to the small working group as an idea.
- Short updates on the following Initiatives
Bruce: The following are updates on our VIVO initiatives:
- VIVO-In-A-Box – we are trying to figure out how to move this forward.
- EuroCris MOU – done and planning our first meeting
- Interoperability Working Group – looking pretty good
- Proposed Knowledge Graph White Paper
- VIVO as part of an interoperable research management system
- Research intelligence
- Support for the emerging open knowledge graph
Are the above the right topics for the Knowledge Graph white paper? I have started reaching out to the potential folks who wanted to work on this, so I am still forming this group. This project is at the stage where it can be considerably influenced if one cares to do so.
Bruce: We have covered our agenda with five minutes remaining, are there any other topics of discussion LG members would like to share?
Christian: I stumbled on a French VIVO working group. Here is the link to the program: https://gapn.hypotheses.org/1630
Mike: In Google Translate the title of this meeting is “Vivo, an alternative to proprietary solutions for freely distributing research metadata”
Christian: Can we reach out to the organizers to get more involved, or learn the outcome of this French meeting?
Bruce agreed this could be done, and perhaps Mic would have a contact.
Meeting adjourned at 11:56am EST
