Multi-institutional Search
Visit the VIVO Search Wiki
A new wiki has been set up here on DuraSpace for planning the re-implementation and permanent hosting for the VIVO multi-institutional search.
As before, the search will be implemented using open source tools if institutions or consortia wish to establish an independent search, but we are planning new options for a shared search for all research networking platforms capable of producing VIVO data and the option for consortia to have a search scoped to their own membership, whether by discipline, affiliation, or geographic location.
The vivosearch.org prototype
The VIVO project has developed tools to support the creation of search indexes spanning multiple sites and established a website at http://vivosearch.org for demonstrating this capability, using the open source Drupal content management system and the Apache Solr search engine.
This fully functional prototype search includes data from 7 VIVO sites plus Harvard Profiles. The search index was created in August, 2011 and in its function as a technology demonstrator rather than a production service has been not refreshed on a regular basis.
The tools used to build the vivosearch.org site are described on the vivosearch.org About page; all are open source and available for download from GitHub:
- Linked Data Indexer - Brian Caruso
- vivosolr - Miles Worthington
Plans and opportunities
The vivosearch.org site demonstrates several key principles that the VIVO project believes are important for providing an effective multi-site searching solution.
- Information is indexed from distributed sites but aggregated into a single index. This not only provides a fast response but enables a common relevance ranking of results.
- The search relies on the VIVO ontology as a common data model but not on any specific software at participating sites. This supports the Recommendations and Best Practices for Research Networking adopted by principal investigators of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Awards.
- Any group or consortium of institutions may elect to establish a common search index, and any institution may elect to participate in more than one such index.
As the VIVO community evolves from a grant-funded project to an official DuraSpace incubator project, the future of vivosearch.org will factor prominently among the issues to be addressed by principal parties involved, and input is welcome from any quarter. The alignment of VIVO with DuraSpace was announced in a July, 2012 press release and detailed more fully in an October, 2012 prospectus.
Technical Status
What is compatible data?
The VIVO multi-institutional search is predicated on harvesting and indexing RDF compatible with the VIVO ontology beginning with version 1.3. We do not believe that subsequent changes to the ontology since version 1.3 have been significant enough to require changes to the indexer, but this will need to be confirmed with every new VIVO release.
The vivosearch.org site demonstrates that Harvard Profiles produces linked data compatible with VIVO
How does that data need to be made available to the linked data indexer?
Operational and Support Requirements
Service Opportunities
Background
NIH program mandate with respect to centralized infrastructure:
The VIVO project was funded from September, 2009 - August, 2012 by the National Institutes of Health under the terms of the Recovery Act 2009 Limited Competition: Enabling National Networking of Scientists and Resource Discovery (U24). The terms of the RFA specifically discouraged reliance on a centralized infrastructure:
Although multiple approaches could be appropriate for these projects, the NCRR is interested in distributed or federated approaches to both research networking and resource discovery with local control of information sources. Applications that propose a centralized approach are not responsive to this FOA.
