October 31, 2013 Implementing Faculty Information Systems William K. Barnett, Pervasive Technology Institute, Indiana University, and The Indiana CTSI 2013 UCosmic Consortium Conference

What do I mean by Faculty Information Systems? 1.They manage information about people in academic institutions, usually faculty. 2.They include data on publications, grants, classes, affiliations, patents, creative works, etc. 3.They support individual and institutional goals

Why am I presenting? 1.Indiana University was one of the original VIVO sites 2.We currently have 4 systems: VIVO, SciVal Experts, Pivot, and our Faculty Annual Review (FAR) system. 3.We have been finding our way amongst our many options – I am not an advocate of any one. 4.I’ve been working with the Clinical and Translational Science Awards Research Networking Group on this for the past 5 years

What do stakeholders want? 1.Faculty and Staff – collaborator discovery? CV generation? Personal web pages? 2.Informationers – to manage information services and data, to create new tools and understand how they work. 3.Administrators – to understand the competitive landscape, to manage institutional processes, and to evaluate programs and faculty. 4.Providers – sustain their operations, support institutional efforts, and develop new services.

Requirements 1.Meet Stakeholder Needs - what are the important problems? 2.Be Sustained Financially - where are the budgets? 3.Fit the Institutional Culture - how does the institution behave?

Key implementation considerations 1.Good data are expensive, but that is the key institutional asset. It should receive institutional investment, and you should invest in making them high quality. 2.Standardized data deliver value across platforms, departments, and institutions, and standardization efforts like VIVO are critical. 3.Tools will come and go. If your tools talk to your data in standardized ways, you can more easily use your data and sustain operations.

Tool Options: 1.Build and maintain (e.g., our FAR system) 2.Buy from industry (e.g., SciVal, Pivot, Sympletic) 3.Support community software (e.g., VIVO) 4.Leverage institutional Business Intelligence tools 5.Participate in ‘marketplaces’ (e.g., LinkedIn or ResearchGate).

Data Options: 1.Ingest from internal systems (e.g., HR, research administration, course management systems) 2.Ingest from public data sources (e.g., PubMed, RePORTER) 3.Purchase from providers (e.g., publishers, business intelligence firms) 4.Manual ingest by faculty or staff.

All institutions solve these problems uniquely, but all need to collaborate and share data to accomplish their goals. Thank you, Bill Barnett