Which VIVO Harvester Queries Best Populate the VIVO Database with Accurate Faculty Member Publications?

The National Institutes of Health encourages its research partners to use VIVO software to enhance research investigator collaboration. VIVO provides a dynamic online directory to facilitate professional networking opportunities for investigators who share similar or complementary research interests (VIVO, 2015). VIVO Harvester performs author searches in PubMed to populate VIVO profiles with article citations. Harvester only provides 65% of the total number of references (Eldredge et al., 2015), however. This study describes how the VIVO Harvester query design impacts Harvester’s ability to populate the VIVO database with the correct citations to investigator publications. This action research project analyzed elements critical to optimizing Harvester’s accuracy, thereby informing the development of similar queries for other institutions. Institution-specific knowledge coupled to expert PubMed search skills are essential to optimizing the accuracy of VIVO. This development fosters discovery and enhances translational research capable of benefitting society.