Terrie Wheeler
LG members:
Paul Albert, Ann Beynon, 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:
= Secretary
Zoom connection information is available in the Outlook invitation.
Julia – reference last Month’s meeting minutes if anyone has corrections or additions. Additionally, she reviewed how she used to run VIVO LG meetings, for the sake of consistency.
New members: Bruce Herbert from Texas A&M, and Damaris Murry from Duke U.
New Officers: Bruce Herbert – Chair, Anna - Vice Chair, Doug Hahn – Treasurer, Terrie Wheeler – Secretary
2. Alternate VIVO LG meeting date and time
Bruce Herbert – I’ve been getting a quick orientation from Laurie (Lyrasis) and others regarding VIVO and some things that we may need to work on currently. One of these is finding a different meeting time. This current time, which is the 4th Tuesday of the month, overlaps with the VIVO Development Call. It seems that this time of the day is basically OK for everyone, but we should consider a different day of the week.
No decision on an alternative day was reached at this meeting. Bruce will send out a poll asking for the LG to vote on what day of the week is best for them.
3. Financial Update– Laurie Arp will do this update this month, since Doug is just starting the Treasurer’s term. For this fiscal year (July 1, 2019-June 30, 2020), we earned less than we budgeted in memberships and RSP fees, but the program had cost savings in areas including travel expenses and some additional revenue from the conference sponsorships.
Overall for the year, we budgeted to earn slightly more than we spent ($2,542), but instead retained $11,230.
VIVO’s combined net assets (previous retained assets plus this year’s assets) are $63,014.
Julia – have conference memberships been paid yet? Laurie will check and get back to us.
4. Membership Update – Ann Beynon
The Membership Group meets every two weeks, so possibly may have changes. Virginia Tech cancelled. The University of Florida cancelled. LaTrobe University (Australia) cancelled. Brown downgraded. Have renewals from the majority of members. We still have outstanding members we are not sure about American Psychological Association, Cineca (asked for a different billing cycle), Columbia University, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, University of Oklahoma Libraries.
Robert – So I am very concerned about our budget position. No surprise. Let’s be both aggressive and frugal at the same time. The clock is ticking. The time is now. Next year’s fiscal budget could be more challenging than this year’s budget. Might be budgets available this year that might not be available next year. Many users that are not members. Membership – how many VIVO users do we have that are not members? That is one avenue to target before next year. We should also consider a one-time challenge tied to a value proposition.
Christian Hauske: "we should also consider a one-time challenge tied to a value prop" -from my perspective it's all about allocating resources to development and technical maintenance and making this more transparent. A lot of People ask me what Lyrasis is and how it helps VIVO. They all know VIVO, but they have no clue how a Membership would help the sustainability and development of the software.
(Julia shares membership spreadsheet, noting that we all have access to this in the VIVO Leadership Group: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LmiuZSsf_tIkkt1rgfDiw5ClHmo3Vgch8gO8XK6B9vc/edit#gid=1678856749)
Ann – looking at how we can engage members who are not members, or increase the membership level by those who are really active in VIVO. The membership group is trying to speak to these members regarding their contributions to the VIVO Project, especially through membership.
Bruce – what response do you get from those who use VIVO but are not members.
Ann – We mainly approach members, and find that members who are engaged would be willing to engage in membership at same level. We don’t have members who want to increase their membership level. We find some that want to contribute with code instead of money, but this is not sustainable.
Robert continues: I’d assume a 50% cut next year in membership fees.
Bruce: Agree. I have talked to many other American University Libraries that were interested in using VIVO if a simpler solution was available. How is the budget situation in Anna’s organization – SIGMA?
Anna – we have less funding this year than last year.
Christian – budget is growing at TIB, and expected to grow again next year. TIB benefitting from the German digitization initiative significantly. Situation in Europe is very heterogenous. We have a lot of Partners in Europe who expect very drastic Budget cuts. Depends a lot on the governments in each Country.
Bruce – Thanks, Christian. When I ran my research group, I had to keep money coming in. Same for VIVO. We need to pay salaries, etc.
5. Bruce – Would like to hear why you are members of the VIVO? What is the value proposition for your organization to maintain its membership in the VIVO Community?
Terrie – At Weill Cornell, we don’t purchase either Elements or Pure. The value proposition I give for a VIVO Platinum Membership to my administration is that this is a low five figure investment that saves us from a much higher six figure investment, which is what we were quoted for both Pure and Elements. VIVO also enables us to own our own data, a very compelling argument at this time.
Paul (Weill Cornell) – Metcalf’s law and network effect – seems like the assumption of this group is to share data between institutions. What if that is not true. What are our stakeholders’ problems, and what are they trying to solve?
Doug (Texas A&M)– We’ve been able to use VIVO to get the data from a variety of schools across campus. VIVO with faculty profiles shows how the data across schools has been aggregated and visualized. Now administrators are impressed with what VIVO offers. Now scholarly communications office getting requests for reports from the data on a regular basis. Ability to own our own data.
Anna (SIGMA) – using something that already exists is very valuable. Open source is a good option for non-profits. Some things that do not translate well for SIGMA are that data in CRIS is better than data in VIVO. How to upload this data in VIVO.
Ann (Clarivate) – we are a business, with a different view. We have a set of products well established around the world. VIVO fills a gap in this portfolio. Rather than build a commercial offering, seems a better practice to partner with an open source community, embracing this community and product. VIVO complements Clarivate’s other offerings. When there is an RFP, often VIVO is not even in the conversation. VIVO needs to be in the conversation at the commercial, competitive level. Clarivate salespeople talk about VIVO around the world. Its not something that everyone understands. People don’t understand why there is value in VIVO. Slow adoption, but more traction in US.
Damaris (Duke) – being able to own our data is huge. We know what is going in, what is coming out, what the visualizations look like. The ontology is a benefit, but many people don’t want to hear about it. The structured ontology can be helpful at times. Worth keeping the vision of sharing data across VIVO sites, as Paul had mentioned. Being able to define new types of scholarship is available through VIVO.
Tony (Brown) – We’ve been in transition for the last 1.5 years. Tony has had conversations with those on campus in biomedical sciences, and often the Brown profile in VIVO comes up in Google Searching optimization. This is valuable. Can see who collaborators are, and what similar work is being done at Brown. Public profile is highly used at Brown. So far Tony doesn’t have a sense of how the exposure via VIVO translated to other forms of value. What does enabling these connections offer beyond a public presence? The humanities at Brown use VIVO considerably as well as the sciences use VIVO.
Bruce: - Texas A&M took Brown’s success at digital identity and brought it to Texas.
Paul - The #1 Google hit for your researcher.™ Brown has best SEO of all sites according to a 2014 analysis of Anirvan. https://biomed20.ucsf.edu/category/profiles-research-networking-software/
To me, this seems like an issue that institutions could actually care about.
Christian (TIB Hannover) – VIVO a catalyst for necessary development. Often difficult to get data from your own institutions, which is very valuable. Use data to report to funding organizations. Have already obtained many successful grants with VIVO. Christian’s small team will be renamed shortly. VIVO helps other people/groups win grants. List of German institutions with a VIVO will grow in the next year. Number of German participants at last conference, and continues to grow.
Robert: (in the chat). Maybe next time, we can do a “lessons learned", talk about what a pivot might be comprised of, and then create a case study or share a case study to help us establish what we might want to do.
Bruce adjourns meeting at 12:02 noon.