General information about VIVO
What is VIVO?
- VIVO is an open source semantic web application that enables the discovery of research and scholarship across disciplines at a particular institution.
- VIVO is populated with detailed profiles of faculty and researchers including information such as publications, teaching, service, and professional affiliations.
- VIVO also provides a powerful search functionality for locating people and information within the institution.
What is the VIVO network?
VIVOweb.org is the URL for the VIVO project. The VIVO web enables the discovey of research and scholarship across institutions by creating a semantic cloud of information that can be searched and browsed. Participants will include institutions with local installations of VIVO or those with research discovery and profiling applications that can provide semantic web!-compliant data. The information accessible through the VIVO network's search and browse capability will therefore reside and be controlled locally within institutional VIVOs or other semantic web applications.
How did VIVO get started?
The application that supports VIVO was developed at Cornell University in 2003 and implemented locally in 2004. VIVO is being expanded through a $12.2m stimulus grant from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Which institutions are participating in the national VIVO network as part of the NIH-funded project?
The seven partner institutions include University of Florida, Cornell University, Indiana University, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, The Scripps Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Ponce School of Medicine.
How can my institution become a participating member of the national VIVO network?
Your institution is free to participate in the national network by installing and using the application. The application provides linked data via RDF data making you part of the semantic web! or you can use any other application that provides linked data. You can also get involved with developing applications that provide enhanced search, new collaboration capabilities, grouping, finding and mapping scientists and their work. For more information, see the participation page.
Please subscribe to our notification list for updates on the VIVO project and its availability or use our contact form to obtain specific information.
Whom can I contact with questions about the VIVO project?
Please complete our contact form for additional questions about the project. A member of the project team will be happy to respond to your inquiry.
VIVO at your institution
How does VIVO obtain profile information?
Profile information is automatically imported in the system from verified sources such as human resources, grant databases, course listings, and faculty activity information. Data may also be entered or customized manually by the individual user. VIVO then makes this information available for browse and search capabilities as well as export to other web pages and outside sources.
Who are the primary users of VIVO?
Individuals may access the browse and search functionalities of VIVO at any time via the web. Researchers, scholars, students, administrators, funding agencies, donors, and members of the general public may all benefit from utilizing VIVO.
What are the key benefits of VIVO?
- VIVO's underlying database is automatically populated with information from verified sources, thus reducing the need for manual input of data.
- VIVO users can locate profiles in the system using a variety of search methods, therefore facilitating the discoverability of researchers.
- VIVO provides a centralized source of personal and professional information that may be utilized in a variety of ways.
In what situations might VIVO be helpful?
- Researchers looking for collaborators on large-scale or multidisciplinary grants
- Funding agencies and donors in search of individuals with specialized skills or expertise
- Faculty who want to advertise upcoming seminars or courses they are teaching
- Administrators hoping to showcase faculty or departmental activities
- Students trying to locate graduate study programs
How does VIVO enhance my research or academic standing?
VIVO facilitates the process of finding research collaborators or sources of specified skills and informaton. The integrated system promotes the kind of cross-disciplinary collaborations that are becoming more vital in the current research environment.
What are the advantages of using VIVO versus other social or research networking tools?
Most of the current networking platforms depend on manual input of information by users while VIVO is automatically populated with data from verified sources. VIVO's data collection methodology uses controlled vocabulary in order to standardize the information and make it easier to locate and retrieve. The system's added functionality provides data in a consistent format that is readable by not only people but other computer applications as well.
How do I get VIVO for my institution?
The open source VIVO software and ontology are available for download on SourceForge. If you have questions about the project please contact project members using the contact form. If you would like to receive regular updates about the VIVO project, please subscribe to our notification list.
VIVO specifications and technical information
How does VIVO work?
VIVO technology is a semantic web application coupled with an ontology editor. It uses the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and supports customizable browsing. Information in VIVO is stored as "triples" of the form subject-predicate-object; for example, John Doe (subject) - is author of (predicate) - "The Effect of Video Games on Kids" (object). With VIVO, you can create and load ontologies, edit relationships, build a public web site to display data, and search it using the Lucene search engine.
Is VIVO a system of record?
VIVO is not a system of record although some parts of a user's profile may represent the sole source of particular information such as short bio statements, research interests, or geographic areas of focus.
How does VIVO handle identifiers for researchers?
Please see the VIVO response to a UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) August, 2011 questionnaire looking at the way other countries are building name identifier systems relating to researchers in higher education.
Will VIVO archive information or maintain historical data?
In general, VIVO is not designed to archive information. The system is designed as a window into current research activity within or across institutions.
Can VIVO interact with other software applications?
Many software applications can benefit from using the information that will be maintained by the national VIVO network. Applications and external web sites can use data from the network to provide enhanced searches, collaboration capabilities, grouping, and locating and mapping scientists and their work. If you have an application or idea that would leverage the information VIVO provides, please let us know via our contact form.
How does VIVO handle privacy issues?
VIVO profiles will only contain public data pertaining to research and scholarship activities. No sensitive information will be collected. Therefore, items pertaining to salaries, employment history, job evaluations, etc. will never be held or displayed in VIVO.
Who is responsible for maintaining the national VIVO network?
Funding for the VIVO project specifies VIVO as a lightweight architecture that will support the discovery of researchers across institutions as long as the information about them resides in locally controlled installations. Currently, each of the seven participating institutions is responsible for maintaining local data and information. Models for sustaining the VIVO project beyond the grant period are being explored.
How do I download and implement VIVO for my institution?
You may download VIVO from the SourceForge open community site. Also available on the SourceForge site are mailing lists, a project wiki, and IRC channel to learn more and communicate with project members and others working with VIVO. Contact us if you want to be notified of updates on the VIVO project or to obtain specific information.
