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Hello VIVO Community,
The beginning of the year has already brought a number of important developments across the VIVO ecosystem. From institutional implementations and community workshops to technical
progress and governance discussions, the community continues to collaborate to strengthen open research information infrastructure.
This update highlights recent community news, development progress, and upcoming opportunities to engage with the VIVO project.
Thank you for being part of this open, global community working to make research information more connected and discoverable.
If you would like to receive this newsletter directly and are not yet subscribed, please
subscribe.
(If you subscribe, Lyrasis will only send emails pertaining to the VIVO Community Newsletter.)
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Highlights
Request for Comments: Disambiguation & Deduplication Specification
A
Request for Comments (RFC) has been published for
the proposed Disambiguation and Deduplication specification, a key component of the VIVO Hosting Minimum Viable Product development effort.
The proposal outlines an approach for improving how duplicate entities and ambiguous records are identified and managed in VIVO. These capabilities aim to support better data
quality and more efficient curation workflows for institutions operating VIVO instances.
Community feedback is essential to refining the proposal, and members were encouraged to review the document and share comments during the two-week review period.
VIVO 1.16 Community Testing
The VIVO 1.16 Release
Candidate was made available for two weeks of Community
Testing on February 27. There are
several
important new features in this release. Community participation in testing remains one of the most valuable ways to contribute to the project and help ensure
a successful release.
Lyrasis CST Interoperability Project — VIVO Specifications to be Developed
The interoperability features to be specified and developed by the Lyrasis-funded
CST
Interoperability Project have been selected! The following user stories were selected based on the feedback that was supplied by the community:
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As a VIVO user, when I add a publication to my VIVO profile I want to deposit the publication in my institutional repository and link to it from my VIVO profile.
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As a VIVO user, I want to receive updates on my VIVO profile when there are status or metadata changes to a linked publication in my institutional repository.
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As an institution interested in adopting VIVO, I would like to know how to integrate it with local systems.
To support the these user stories, between now and June 2026 Jess Farrell will be developing the following specifications:
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Using VIVO to deposit publications to DSpace utilizing the
SWORD
protocol.
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Receiving information in VIVO about updates to publications stored in DSpace using the
COAR-Notify
protocol.
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Developing a Lyrasis CST Interoperability Repository to include robust documentation on how to implement selected VIVO (and other) integrations using open infrastructure.
Jess will be engaging with the VIVO community as she develops these specifications. Look for announcements on the VIVO community list for opportunities to provide feedback. You
can also reach Jess directly in the VIVO Slack or by emailing her at jessica.f...@Lyrasis.org.
Lyrasis anticipates issuing an RFP for implementation of the specifications in the summer of 2026.
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Upcoming Events
VIVO at euroCRIS 2026
VIVO will be the focus of a 90-minute session at
euroCRIS
2026 in May in the Azores:
VIVO in the Evolving CRIS Ecosystem: Community, Institution, Europe, Nation, and Technology.
Community members will discuss VIVO’s role in the context of national research ecosystems and research intelligence, and present updates on strategic directions and governance.
The PIDfest 2026 Call for Proposals
PIDfest 2026 will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands, from October 27-29, 2026. The theme of PIDfest this year is
Keeping Knowledge Connected, and the Call
for Proposals is open now through March 22. It would be great to have some VIVO representation in the program!
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Community Updates
Making Research Visible — Osnabrück University
A recent
VIVO
community story highlights how
Osnabrück University uses VIVO as the central platform for presenting and connecting research information across the institution.
The system serves as the university’s main portal for research expertise, projects, collaborations, and doctoral work. By aggregating and connecting research information in one
place, the platform supports greater visibility and discoverability of institutional research activities.
The implementation demonstrates how VIVO can support institutional transparency while strengthening connections between researchers, projects, and outputs.
7th VIVO Workshop 2025 — Community Summary
A
summary of
the 7th VIVO Workshop, held at TIB in Hannover, was recently published on the VIVO website.
The workshop brought together community members for two days of discussions, presentations, and hands-on sessions focused on research information management, ontology development,
interoperability, and institutional use cases.
Events like the VIVO Workshop continue to play an important role in strengthening collaboration and knowledge exchange across the VIVO community.
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Governance Updates
Leadership Group Meetings — January & February 2026
The first two Leadership Group meetings of 2026 focused on development progress, community initiatives, and long-term sustainability planning for the VIVO project. Notes can
be found here.
Preparations for the
VIVO 1.16 release are nearing completion, with documentation underway and a community testing phase expected soon. Development work also continues on the
ORCID–VIVO integration, with the remaining work focused on authentication components required for sign-in functionality.
The group also reviewed progress on several technical initiatives, including accessibility improvements, updates to the VIVO Harvester infrastructure, and other ongoing work
related to the project’s Hosting Minimum Viable Product development efforts.
Beyond development updates, discussions addressed the
long-term sustainability of the VIVO ecosystem, including exploration of potential updates to the membership model, financial trends, and opportunities to increase the visibility of VIVO within the broader research information management community.
Additional community initiatives were also highlighted, including work exploring ways to integrate VIVO research information into
Typo3 content management systems and presentations about using VIVO to support registries for
scientific instruments aligned with the VIVO ontology.
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Registry
Is your
VIVO instance listed in the registry?
Help us maintain reliable information on the community of VIVO users around the world by
registering
your
repository today. Keeping the registry up to date helps institutions discover each other and strengthens the visibility of the VIVO ecosystem.
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Stay Connected
Your ideas and participation are key to VIVO's momentum!
To learn more, connect with us on
vivoweb.org,
follow us on Mastodon at @ne...@vivoweb.org or
join the conversation on Slack.
Thank you for your continued engagement — and remember, the more we are, the stronger the community becomes.
GO VIVO!
— The VIVO Team
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