What’s VIVO Scholar?

• VIVO Scholar is an optional addition to VIVO. VIVO Scholar provides a lightweight, customizable display with enhanced search features, and an easy mechanism for sharing VIVO data.
• VIVO Scholar works with an existing VIVO implementation; it does not replace the current VIVO stack.
• The VIVO Scholar beta user interface (UI) is a minimally-viable version that’s available for the community to explore. As institutions implement VIVO Scholar in the coming months, more functionality will be added to the beta version of the UI.
• VIVO Scholar uses modern, developer-friendly web technologies, GraphQL and Web Components, lowering the barrier of entry for web developers.

Check out the live VIVO Scholar demo and the VSTF Test VIVO that furnishes sample data.  

Why add VIVO Scholar to your VIVO stack?

VIVO Scholar is perfect for existing VIVO sites who are seeking to: 

• Update their VIVO’s user interface and profiles, as well as configure the search experience, including facets, filters, relevancy scores and sorting options
• Reduce developer resources required to customize the user interface -- web developers with HTML, CSS, and Javascript skills can customize VIVO Scholar with reusable web components
• Share their VIVO data with local websites and systems using GraphQL.

How does VIVO Scholar work with VIVO?

First, VIVO is installed, loaded with data, and if desired, users are given to the data editing interface. 

Next, Scholars Discovery is installed and data is loaded from VIVO. 

Finally, VIVO Scholar is installed and becomes the public user interface. Profile owners are sent to VIVO to edit their profiles.

What is Scholars Discovery?

Scholars Discovery is a middleware component that consumes data from VIVO, publishes VIVO data in GraphQL, and displays VIVO data in the VIVO Scholar UI.

Developed by Texas A&M University, Scholars Discovery also powers Scholars@TAMU and provides a separate UI developed in Angular and a REST API. Scholars Discovery offers a lot more functionality than what’s used in VIVO Scholar.

What are the benefits of GraphQL?

The GraphQL API is a user-friendly query endpoint with browseable schema documentation and an interactive query builder. GraphQL is modern, accessible, and easily-configurable. 

Sharing data is a top priority for the VIVO Project, and GraphQL adds another way to extract VIVO data that is particularly useful for web developers. For many VIVO sites, sharing data with web developers is key to a useful, sustainable VIVO. 

Explore VIVO Scholar!

The VIVO Scholar Task Force invites the community to download VIVO Scholar and load the test data set. We are looking for contributors to help us add data and functionality to create a final version of VIVO Scholar. 

For more information about installing the VIVO Scholar Beta, refer to the VIVO Scholar Task Force page.