TUCfis: Applying VIVO as the new RIS of the Technical University of Chemnitz

Dang Nguyen Hai Vu, André Langer, Martin Gaedke

TL;DR: Lightning talk about TUCfis- Applying VIVO as the new RIS of the Technical University of Chemnitz

Abstract:

In 2019, the Technical University of Chemnitz (TUC) in Germany has started a project to establish a new research Information system providing structured academic information in a Linked Data fashion. In the first analysis phase, essential requirements for the implementation of a rich, sustainable, digital research information system were identified and concretized. Various established research information systems at other institutions were evaluated and compared; deciding for Duraspace’s VIVO in the end.
In the initial development period, we achieved the first milestone to deploy, customize, and populate a stable demonstrator with basic functionalities. At the moment, we face three particular challenges related to the complexity of data, data ingestion, and technical issues that we want to share and discuss in our talk.
Besides traditional VIVO information entity types, we provide additional information on academic projects, publications, and the knowledge skills of a researcher or professorship. The main challenge is to gather and provide meta-information about an entity, which cannot directly be taken from an existing data source. An example of that is the wish to apply VIVO as an expert search application where expertise information is provided for every researcher.
The next challenge is the decision to which extent are staff members allowed to update automatically-collected information. In particular, by using the existing VIVO backend interface and how to ensure to not overwrite updated information in the next ingestion activity.
Finally, the RIS needs to include different landing pages and focal points in views for stakeholders from the university, industry, the media sector, and other social areas.
We would like to share our own VIVO experience, our future development plan as well as listen to the feedback from the VIVO community.

Keywords: Research Information System, VIVO experience, Expert Search System