This page is part of a short, self-paced tour introducing VIVO for use in an interactive workshop or online.
What is VIVO?
Open software.
VIVO is a suite of open-source software and related tools most often used for sharing information about the research activities and outputs of university and government researchers around the world.
VIVO is most frequently set up and managed at the institution level, close to authoritative sources of information including the researchers themselves, but VIVO is also being creatively adapted for use by research centers within a university, by multi-agency government departments, and by groups of individuals and/or institutions functioning as virtual organizations or as discipline-focsed consortia.
VIVO software is free and readily available on GitHub under the BSD license, which makes no restrictions on what you can do with the code other than requesting acknowledgement.
Open data.
All the data in a public VIVO instance may be directly accessed not only by humans using ordinary web browsers but also by other applications requesting data for query, search, or download for analysis or merging with other open data on the Web. Because VIVO uses the RDF data standard and the ubiquitous HTTP protocol, an investment in creating and populating a VIVO instance makes your data discoverable and shareable on the open Web.
Open ontology.
What is an ontology? According to a classic 1995 reference by Tom Gruber, "A specification of a conceptualization." More informally, an ontology is a formalized recipe for structuring data for human and machine consumption specifying both types of entities and relationships among those types.
The VIVO ontology focuses on the general domain of researchers and their research-related activities and relationships. Notably, it specifically does not attempt to encompass the myriad subject domains of the research itself, which are appropriately the subject of many other ontologies that may be used in conjunction with the VIVO ontology.
As of version 1.6, the VIVO ontology will significantly broaden to encompass research resources (the domain of eagle-i) and clinical expertise through the work of the CTSAconnect project.
Open Community.
