1. Fostering better networking and collaboration among researchers,
research managers, practitioners, extensionists, information managers
in agriculture
Valeria Pesce, Jon Corson-Rikert, John Fereira, Johannes Keizer
Cornell University
Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

2. Part 1
Background and rationale
The connections between you
and your potential
collaborators can take many
forms. They usually follow the
well-understood patterns of
affiliation, publication,
participation, and funding,
which may be often hidden.

3. “Regional capacity development partnership is needed to [...] promote
more effective regional and sub-regional collaborative
research and networking to make better use of available resources
and enhance capacity development in the smaller and weaker national
systems”*
“The convening role of Regional and Global Fora and their functions in the
The GCARD
sharing of knowledge and innovation between regions is crucial in
Road Map
facilitating capacity strengthening and networking of skills
where required to support national development processes and hasten
development through inter-regional learning”*
* GFAR and CGIAR, 2011. The GCARD Road Map. Transforming Agricultural Research
for Development (AR4D) Systems for Global Impact. Available on line at
(http://www.fao.org/docs/eims/upload/294891/GCARD%20Road%20Map.pdf

4.  Fostering collaboration and synergy through
greater awareness
 Reducing duplication of research
 Determining strategic trends based on
strengths and weaknesses of the network
 Identifying missing expertise
 Improving responsiveness to calls for
proposals
 Facilitating team formation
 Providing a marketing tool for research
Jon Corson-Rikert

5. How easy is it today for a researcher, a research manager or
a practitioner to identify / discover:
• his/her potential best collaborators all over the
world for a project
• a person with an answer to his/her question
• an organization running a project on a specific
area of research
• an organization funding projects in a specific
area of research
• all the publications written by a potential
collaborator
• numbers or geographic distribution of available
competencies or ongoing projects

6. Personal connections Conferences Knowledge networks
Institutional
HR database
and online
directories

7.  Going beyond serendipity
 Gathering information systematically
 Focusing on sources providing data by discipline, organization, or topic
 Providing context
▪ More opportunities for connection
▪ Bridging gaps
Discovering what is happening and who does what through meaningful
relationships

8.  Going beyond closed communities and directories
 Search several communities / directories
 Share people profiles, affiliations, competencies, publications
across communities
Now Better networking
IAALD community CIARD RING
GFAR National
databases database of
YPARD experts
AIMS
community
CG Map
e-agriculture community

9. Part 2
Why VIVO?
From Cornell to the VIVO network to AgriVIVO

10. Research & Expertise
Across Cornell
VIVO is a research-focused discovery tool that
enables collaboration among scientists across all
disciplines at Cornell University.
VIVO supports browsing or searching information
on people, departments, courses, grants, and
publications.
http://vivo.cornell.edu/

11. Enabling national
networking of scientists
A $12.2 million, two-year grant from the National
Institutes of Health's National Center for Research
Resources to support the creation of VIVOweb, a
multi-institutional consortium of VIVO installations
that connects biomedical researchers, initially at
seven sites. *
http://vivoweb.org/
* http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct09/VIVOweb.ws.html

12.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture is the first federal
organization to commit to using VIVO, a web
application designed to enable better national
networking between scientists from different
disciplines and locations.*
USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Economic Research
Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, National Agricultural
Statistics Service and Forest Service will be the first five USDA agencies to
participate in VIVO. The National Agricultural Library, which is part of
ARS, will host the web application.*
* http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010/10/0507.xml

13.  "Addressing the critically important agricultural
issues facing the world today requires an
interdisciplinary approach between scientists
across the United States and around the world"
said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.*
"VIVO will be an excellent way to make research
more effective and help researchers forge
important new collaborations that can lead to the
kind of ground breaking results that we need to
help solve the problems we face today.“*
* http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010/10/0507.xml

14.  VIVO: greater interaction, with the goal of catalyzing
networks of campus-wide scholarship, research and
educational activities*
 VIVO U.S. network: greater interaction, with the goal of
catalyzing networks of national scholarship, research and
educational activities in health science
 VIVO at USDA: better national networking among scientists
in agriculture, both in the government and academia
 AgriVIVO: greater interaction, with the goal of
catalyzing networks of worldwide agricultural
research, educational and policy activities
* http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/devare/07devare.html

15. Enabling global networking
for agriculture
 A global cross-institutional version of VIVO to
help researchers, research
managers, practitioners, extensionists, informati
on managers, students in agriculture discover
common interests and make connections.
 The goal is to foster alliances, making
agricultural research and innovation move
faster.

16.  AgriVIVO will not replace any existing community or database, it will
work as a common registry to interlink the data managed in the
existing communities and databases
 AgriVIVO will only store pointers to and relations between the
Agricultural Research Management data managed anywhere
 Communities and databases will indirectly share data through AgriVIVO
IAALD community CIARD RING
National
GFAR Person1 > Affiliation > Institution3
database of
databases Institution3 > Participates in > Project2
experts
YPARD Project2 > Is about > Topic1
AIMS
Person2 > Participates in > Project2
community
Person2 > Expertise > Topic1
Person1 > Knows > Person2
CG Map Person1 > Author of > Publication1
Person1 > Author of > Publication2
e-agriculture community [...]

17. AgriVIVO will only store pointers (URIs) to and relations between:
People Profile Publications
Library of
IAALD community CIARD RING Name: …… AGRIS Congress CABI …
Affiliation: ….
GFAR National Job title: …..
databases database of
YPARD experts
Expertise: …
AIMS Country: …
community
…
CG Map
e-agriculture community Classifications:
agriculture-specific topics Projects
Organizations / subject areas: terms
from
Agrovoc, NALT, CABT…

18. VIVO vs. Google
 VIVO only searches relevant communities / directories
 Information in VIVO is automatically gathered but can be curated
by the community members:
▪ Editing one’s profile
▪ Claiming publications, associating / dis-associating oneself with/from
projects
* Jon Corson-Rickert

19. VIVO vs. Linkedin
(or other similar social channels)
 VIVO searches across communities / directories, Linkedin only uses its internal
database
 People profiles in VIVO are shared across communities
 In VIVO, subject areas, research topics and categorization criteria in general are
customized for the community that is using it
 Data in VIVO can be easily re-used by other applications to build customized search
engines
* Jon Corson-Rickert

20. VIVO vs. EuroCRIS
(or similar research information systems
and career databases)
 EuroCRIS only manages European research data
 EuroCRIS is based on a GRID architecture, more complex and less “open”: data
cannot be automatically imported from other communities / databases; VIVO can
import data from other systems and can expose data for other applications easily
because it uses standard semantic technologies
 EuroCRIS CVs are only available in the EuroCRIS database; people profiles in VIVO
are shared across communities
 In VIVO, subject areas, research topics and categorization criteria in general are
customized for the community that is using it
 Data in VIVO can be easily re-used by other applications to build customized search
engines
VIVO and EuroCRIS have agreed in November 2011 to map
their data models to allow data exchange and common
searches

21. VIVO vs. WISARD / CARIS / InfosysPlus
(or similar agricultural research management information systems)
 Many databases of institutions / projects / experts in
agriculture already exist, but they are managed in silos
▪ Each uses its own format / structure / classifications
▪ Each stores data in its own database with limited or no import /
export functionalities  no data exchange and no common
search possible

22. Part 3
AgriVIVO applications and scenarios

23.  AgriVIVO will integrate data from several large bibliographic
and agricultural research management databases as a unified
VIVO portal
A search portal will support
search across AgriVIVO and
selected other VIVO sites for
agricultural research
(e.g., Florida, Cornell, USDA,
IICA)

24.  VIVO’s search functionalities can be integrated in other websites
through remote calls. In this way, specialized and targeted search engines
can give access to and offer highly customized “views” of the data
coming from AgriVIVO
Publication1 > Is about > Topic1
Publication2 > Is about > Topic1
Publication3 > Is about > Topic1
Person1 > Expertise > Topic1
Person2> Expertise > Topic1
Person3> Author of > Publication1
Person4 > Author of > Publication2
[...]

25. AgriVIVO data  Semantic aggregation
 Maps, charts, statistics
from http://impact.cals.cornell.edu/

26.  AgriVIVO will maintain consistent profile information across
multiple websites by demonstrating the reuse and
enrichment of profile data from several existing agricultural
websites that manage people profiles

27.  Users can validate (add / remove) relations:
 Claiming / disclaiming publications
 authors authority data
 Associating / removing oneself with / from a project
 Disambiguating authors and researchers is an
active area of research
 VIVO is collaborating with ORCID (http://orcid.org)
and the Publish Trust Project
(http://www.publishtrust.org/)

28.  AgriVIVO project: http://www.egfar.org/agrivivo
 VIVO portal at Cornell: http://vivo.cornell.edu/
 VIVOweb: http://vivoweb.org/
 On VIVO: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july07/devare/07devare.html
 VIVO going national: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct09/VIVOweb.ws.html
 VIVO at USDA:
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010/10/0507.xml
Contact: agrivivo@gmail.com