July 24, 2024 – VIVO Leadership Group Meeting - https://lyrasis.zoom.us/j/9963190968
LG members:
Lyrasis:
Regrets:
August 28, 2024 – VIVO Leadership Group Meeting - https://lyrasis.zoom.us/j/9963190968
Agenda
Times: 9:30 AM CDT; 10:30 AM EDT, 16:30 Europe --- Meeting ID: 978 9514 1424
Welcome – All
- Selection - Notetaker & Attendance (1 minute)
- Consent Agenda (Please read before meeting.) ( 1 minutes)
Bryan:
Bryan & Bruce were asked to meet with University of Massachusetts, to talk with their team and Q&A about their interest in adopting VIVO. They are interested in continuing discussions after the first meeting.
Christian:
VIVO Webinar is planned for the Leibniz Association on September 5th. Overview on “What is VIVO?”, then 3 presentations of VIVO use cases (ARL – Academy for Territorial Development, ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology), then some hands on with our demo VIVO.
Invitation to present VIVO to the Leibniz CRIS-Tage. Separate talk about the VIVO community, supported by Michele.
Bridget:
The openvivo instance has been shut down and links removed from the website. A final image snapshot was captured as a backup just in case it is needed.
Initial discussions have been had with Hosting Services about standing up demo.vivo.org and there is currently an action item on the committers team to decide upon the data to use in the demo instance and how to include it in the docker setup.
The VIVO Slack workspace has been upgraded to the Pro version.
The presentation on VIVO with OpenAlex has been accepted for presentation at the Paris Conference on Open Research Information
- VIVO LG Member Updates:
- Texas A&M Derek Halling & Doug Hahn (15 minutes)
- Q&A (5 minutes)
2. Tactical Sub-Committee – Update: Bridget (5 minutes)
- Comments re: older “strategic” documents Sub-committee members (5-10 minutes)
3. How VIVO developer team prioritizes software enhancements / direction:
Dragan (5 minutes)
All – Discussion (5 minutes)
4. VIVO Budget Report: Terrie (10 minutes)
5. Budget enhancement idea / funding – software development:
- Robert Cartalano – Bryan (5 minutes)
6. Partnerships & Opportunities – Updates / Ongoing Agenda Item in future(?): (5 - 10 minutes)
7. Update re: Lyrasis Learning - VIVO panel session opportunity:
Bryan & All (5 minutes)
8. Elections – Lyrasis Mic / All (10 minutes)
9. VIVO survey – Help from Lyrasis Bridget/Bryan (5 minutes)
- Offer from Lyrasis’ Lisa Larson – Sr. Director Outreach & Engagement & Kait Neese – Member Outreach Representative, South
10. Closing comments – thoughts? (2 minutes)
Notes
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
Present
* Bryan Cooper
* Brian Lowe
* Douglas Hahn
* Derek Halling
* Stefano Pinelli
* Christian Hauschke
* Mic Mennielli
* Bruce Herbert
* Dragan Ivanvic
* Bridget Almas
* Paul Albert
* Rob Cartolano
* Terrie Wheeler
Minutes:
* Consent agenda approved
* VIVO LG Member Updates
* Texas A&M (Doug and Derek)
* VIVO was a platform and mechanism to start a conversation in the library for a RIM system
* Installed and it gave administration something to look it
* Helped to have the conversations about funding and staffing because it was something visual that people could look at
* Over the last 10 years, the conversation hasn't really changed
* Still use it to demonstrate the value of a RIM system to administration
* Overtime selling point has morphed
* outgrew VIVO and the user interface that people see
* Participated with Duke in Scholars Discovery UI
* Continue to use and evolve the Scholars Discovery UI
* Don't use VIVO at all for any public consumption
* Use it for the ontology, triple store management and to keep everyone honest that we are doing everything appropriately and establishing the links and data management correctly
* Outgrew the front-end
* VIVO as a platform needs to evolve to superceed Scholars@TAMU
* Pros
* Open source
* Ontology
* Enables the conversation around data and RIM systems
* Cons
* architecture is dated
* old technologies
* What would have done differently
* didn't know how to use it
* didn't know what data to put into it
* didn't do good data management
* dumped everything into VIVO
* after 2 years, the data was all bad
* had to start over and curate the data as it's being sent into VIVO and the triple store so that it's meaningful for reports, linking and faculty profiles
* What would make it more robust
* architecture needs to evolve
* Best thing about VIVO
* the community
* we all have a deep seated love for VIVO and what it means
* the community is more than VIVO
* Leadership should know
* Still committed to using VIVO
* Contribute to the Scholars angular app
* Serves its need - a talking point on campus
* All the faculty have profiles
* TAMU system always interested in standing up VIVO, but then balk at the resources it takes
* Questions
* What causes the updates to take so long?
* It's self-inflicted. Doing updates to the triple store takes a normal amount of time, but have to rebuild the Solr index that feeds Scholars@TAMU takes at least 2 hours.
* VIVO data is 4 hours out of sync from when a person edits a profile before it shows up at the Scholars@TAMU interface
* Wanted instant gratification for updates, but want it curated, but inserted a person to the process
* One FTE devoted to the curation
* Resources needed
* Derek (visionary), Ethel (curator/implementor)
* Systems admin/developer is a shared resource
* Need a dedicated developer and 1/2 time Sys Admin
* Community needs resources so that it's more than just them
* Haven't had a focused developer-centered community initiative since Scholars at Duke
* What are the 3 top things VIVO needs to focus on to become more competitive with e.g. commercial products that are out there
* Making it easier to get the data in - bulk loading the data
* e.g. want to see the grants, the publications, see the connections
* ReCiter harvester from Cornell only works for medical
* they use Symplectic elements. The only reason they pay for that is to do the aggregation. It harvests from the end points, aggregates, dedupes and spits it back out
* if VIVO could have that functionality it would be great
* every year Symplectic adds more features
* don't want to run it as a front-end, just like the back-end
* Aggregation features of Symplectic
* datasources
* figures out identifiers for people
* brings in all of their data sets
* aggregates, dedupes
* then VIVO harvests from there
* use symplectic to harvest local datasets because the deduplication is superior to anything that they could maintain
* Strategic Subcommittee Update
* See slides for details
* Discussion
* Paul's document categorizing VIVO's needs as a hierarchy of needs is a really helpful way to think about it. Should consider retaining and using this to guide our work to avoid paralysis.
* Spreadsheet of post 1.12 development priorities - it was nice to see that the highest priority items there fit into the lowest (first) level in Paul's hierarchy.
* Idea of having Solr index take priority over the triple store for serving the interface is something that has appeared over and over and it's encouraging to see how that has worked for TAMU, may make it easier for more developers to get involved
* 2018 strategy meeting document - sometimes we're too afraid of making new features because of worry about incompatibilities
* Historical processes for tactical decisions of software development
* Actors
* VIVO adopters/customers really should be involved to understand the need and the impact
* VIVO leadership group needs to provide the long-term vision
* VIVO tech team/committers should be part of the discussion about how realistic the roadmap is and how to make that possible
* Approaches
* weekly meetings
* sprints
* referenced the VIVO post-1.12.0 development priorities in the first couple of months when he joined and it was helpful
* GitHub milestones and project boards
* Issues
* don't have strong communication with adopters other than those who participate in the technical meeting
* appreciate the leadership attempt to have the use cases shared
* missing the face-to-face contact of the VIVO conferences
* engagement meetings 1x per month was an idea that has been discussed, could be helpful
* need stronger involvement of the leadership group
* has in the past presented technical updates to the leadership group, should do this more regularly this to validate technical decisions with leadership
* contributions from community
* sometimes these are postponed
* for features that by everyone, there is often a request to make it configurable
* not enough developer resources
* but first need to vision to be made clear
* Committers group
* up to 5 people, usually try to make decisions unanimously
* Budget Report
* Highlighted net assets: $159,387 that includes the ~$12k saved this past year
* Memberships were slightly down but offset by Clarivate's unbudgeted RSP fee and interest income
* Noted that Salary/contractor labor/consultants slightly lower than expected
* Noted that travel was under budget thanks to Lyrasis covering some of those costs
* Software Development Fund
* How can we engage as early as January/February with institutions before the fiscal year ends to pull in some additional dollars
* As we develop our tactical priorities for software development, if we can define estimated price points for getting certain functionality developed, we could let leadership/membership know and invite them to fund it
* might also look to outsourcing development to areas of the world where it's a little cheaper
* Partnerships and Opportunites
* Bridget talked about OpenAlex/OurResearch possibilities, Christian's upcoming presentation for Paris conference, possibility for OpenAlex to fill the role of e.g. Symplectic Elements
* Christian shared the following link in the chat: works-magnet to improve OpenAlex metadata. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIFHhz2OQPg
* https://works-magnet.dataesr.ovh/
* Suggested that we include partnerships and opportunities as a regular agenda item for the leadership group, no objections
* Bryan talked about need to get partners on the website
* But need to make sure people don't get in to for free because it's a membership benefit for paying RSPs
* Lyrasis Learning Panel session opportunity
* no rush on this, we can take the time we need to to put something together
* I can be 1 hour or 1/2 hours
* it's not an additional cost for Lyrasis members, so it's a real opportunity for VIVO to put its best foot forward and market itself to the Lyrasis community
* Bryan would like people to reach out to him if they want to be on the panel session, he will moderate
* Elections
* Platinum, Gold and Silver all get a seat
* Bronze is the only that normally gets an election
* Community member elections
* then officers
* Google drive for it is all setup with templates
* if good with it, we're ready to start
* Christian thinks community members should be elected by the community not the leadership group, but needs more discussion and thought about to do it, so we hopefully can consider this for next year
* VIVO Survey
* As we move through the subcommittee we'll have a better idea of what we need ask in a survey. Email Bryan with suggestions.
* Lyrasis Outreach team is willing to ask questions of Lyrasis customers. As a leadership group need to decide what those should be
* The idea is to try to help increase adoption/membership
* Really need to define what the message is that we want to send out
* Should have a meeting with the LyrasisLearning and Engagement teams as we move forward with the subcommittee work
* Open Comments
* Christian: Has an opportunity for a co-located event at a Semantic conference in November (not sure which one - maybe this? https://swib.org/swib24/). Do we want to participate? Christian is willing to take the lead.
* Is there a way to tape these presentations and get them on the website?
* TIB AV portal has a lot of presentations at https://av.tib.eu/search?q=vivo
* Need a channel where to post them on the website
* Website has this capability, just need to turn it on but we need people willing to populate it
