DESCRIPTION (provided by the applicant): The proposed work will establish national networking of scientists by providing a new software system (VIVO) and support for scientists using VIVO. Scientists using VIVO will be able to find other scientists and their work. Conversely, scientists using VIVO will be found by other scientists doing similar or complimentary work. VIVO leverages work done over the past five years by Cornell University, supporting researchers and finding of researchers by representing data about them and their activities including publications, awards, presentations and partners. VIVO is fully extensible and based on Sematic Web concepts insuring sound data representation, vastly improved search over existing text based methods and integration of data with other applications. Support for researchers using VIVO will be done by librarians of the research institutions. Librarians provide an existing and fully integrated resource for enabling researchers and the national network. The project will provide six deliverables: 1) A first release of the software to be used at the seven participating institutions focused on institutional resources. This release will be used to help establish internal support for the system and build understanding of system value; 2) A second release incorporating all national networking features which will be used by the seven participating institutions to demonstrate the viability and utility of national deployment; 3) A third release incorporating features requested by the NIH and the project's Executive Advisory Board, fully integrated with the corresponding resource discovery solution, enabling full national networking capability; 4) a community support process to insure sustainability; 5) a sustainable, open product development process; and 6) a national, on-going governance process. The national networking of scientists enabled by VIVO will provide a fundamental new capability to improve biomedical research and human health. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE (provided by the applicant) Establishing national networking of scientists will significantly improve all of biomedical research in the United States by providing opportunities across all disciplines to identify existing and on-going work, identify potential new collaborations and improve and extend existing collaborations. National networking gives scientists critical new information regarding current scientific activity to improve science, knowledge and human health.