As the world awaits more information about COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus, we look to biomedical research to deliver information, treatments, and an eventual vaccine.
Lately, research processes are accelerating, and researchers are collaborating, comparing results, and working together more than ever. To collaborate effectively, researchers need to find each other quickly, but that can be hit or miss unless researchers are well-known or actively curate their online presence.
How easy would it be to find a biomedical researcher at your university or research institution? Organizations with VIVO sites provide a valuable service for promoting research. VIVO’s public profiles help researchers find each other, using data from universities’ identity management, grants, and faculty systems.
By implementing VIVO, organizations effectively assert the researcher’s affiliation by creating their profile on their behalf. Ideally, their profiles list their preprints and papers with links to open access versions. The profile can show active funded projects as well as history of their research. Links to the researcher’s co-authors, their co-investigators, their departmental colleagues, and other cohorts enables viewers to browse and understand connections and collaborations. VIVO can provide all these functions, and it’s customizable to the needs of each institution.
Making current research interests, protocols, and data files accessible will promote open science around the world and highlight particular skills and expertise offered by your researchers. VIVO can serve as the institution’s hub for research data maintained in many source systems, particularly when connected to open access repositories that make publications and research data available to the public.
Collaborating requires shared vision and aligning experiences, but also compatibility. For this and so many reasons, public profiles like VIVO’s are key to telling the whole story about a potential collaborator.