Chapter 16: Global Academic Programs: Building Collaborations Using SciVal
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Description
Dr. Bogler first discusses the Research Retreat scheduled shortly after he became Vice President of Global Academic Programs. He then explains how Collexis –eventually renamed SciVal—helps researchers find collaborators. Sci-Val has helped GAP build an international database of experts with areas of specialization identified with keywords. He explains how MD Anderson implemented SciVal and notes that faculty in sister institutions are also listed on a voluntary basis in this very effective system. (The University of Texas System is adopting it.) Dr. Bogler notes that SciVal includes many excellent clinical partners. Discussions are underway to increase the numbers of research partners.
Identifier
BoglerO_02_20141117_C016
Publication Date
11-11-2014
Publisher
The Historical Resources Center, Research Medical Library, The University of Texas Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Oliver Bogler, PhD, Oral History Interview, November 17, 2014
Keywords
Building the Institution; Institutional Processes; Beyond the Institution; Global Issues –Cancer, Health, Medicine; Building/Transforming the Institution; Multi-disciplinary Approaches; Research, Care, and Education
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; Institutional Processes; Beyond the Institution; Global Issues –Cancer, Health, Medicine; Building/Transforming the Institution; Multi-disciplinary Approaches; Research, Care, and Education
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
0:36:59 My ears kind of pricked up when you mentioned the Sister Institution Network Fund, because when I was doing my background research, I came across some mention of the Research Retreat that was held at Banner. Now, was this right after you became Vice President of the Global Academic Programs?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
0:37:21 I think it was fairly soon afterwards, yeah. So we’ve tried in our SINF work to offer it to our network partners, and Banner has been a participant in the SINF. Cooper hasn’t, I don’t think—I think Cooper has had one project in it. I’d have to go back and check on that. But we’ve certainly tried to build that connectivity, and that’s been sort of a good example of what I mentioned a little while ago, which is that GAP remains connected to our Cancer Network partners. And one of my team members, Shubhra Ghosh, she has an MD and a background in clinical research, she often partners with the Cancer Network people on developing academic programs with them. So there is that connectivity.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
0:38:11 Did I misunderstand? Was the Research Retreat part of GAP or was it part of Academic Affairs?
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
0:38:20 No, it was part of GAP. It was GAP playing a sort of supporting role for the Cancer Network.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
0:38:25 Oh, I see. Okay.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
0:38:25 So we don’t take the lead with those relationships, but we come in and we provide that academic component. So research often in the Cancer Network, frankly, means clinical research. There’s not a lot of laboratory-based kind of research going on, so it’s really focused on clinical trials. So we come in and we support that, just because that’s part of our skill set and what we do all the time. We bring people together for these kinds of activities.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
0:38:54 Because I was also reading that at this retreat, which was kind of an unveiling event for—am I saying this correctly—Collexis, and then the Sister Institution Network Fund, those were the two kind of big items that were mentioned.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
0:39:10 Yes. So the Collexis, Collexis is now SciVal. So this is interesting. Yeah, Collexis was a company that was bought by Elsevier, and they transformed it into what they call SciVal Experts, actually. So what we did, one of the challenges that I recognized when we built the Sister Institution Network Fund was, okay, you’ve created this program, you’ve put some fuel into the machine or you’ve given people the opportunity to compete for this fuel. How do they find each other, right? So, of course, that’s what GAP does, GAP networks people, but that’s a pretty inefficient and uneven way of networking. So we started looking around for ways that we could essentially build an experts database that would allow us to find each other. And, you know, we have a website, MD Anderson has a website, but in my opinion, it’s hard to find experts easily on our website. If you type in a search term on MDAnderson-dot-org, you’ll get a list of all the faculty who have worked in that area, but it doesn’t give you a lot of information beyond that, and, frankly, it doesn’t necessarily rank the search results in a way that the people at the top of the search results are the people most connected with that. It certainly wasn’t the case three or four years ago. So we looked for other solutions, and then the other thing we wanted to do was we wanted to make sure that whatever we built wouldn’t put an additional burden on the faculty, so that they wouldn’t have to keep it up to date and so on. So Collexis, now SciVal, fulfills those things. It’s essentially drawn out of the publication databases, and it presents each faculty member as an expert and it sort of abstracts their publications. It extracts keywords for them and gives them ranking. So if you go into this website and you search for the word “breast cancer,” you’re going to get experts ranked in the order of how closely they are associated with that search term, and you can then refine the search and so on. So what we did with our instance of SciVal is include on a voluntary basis people from the Sister Institution Network, so when you go to our instance and you search, you’ll find faculty in that listing that are not just faculty here at MD Anderson, but also elsewhere in the Network. So not only would, quote, “they” be able to find us, but we would be able to find them, and that was the initial reason for that, for implementing that, and I think it’s been very effective. Now, in the meantime, UT System has contracted with SciVal for all the health campuses and, I believe, beyond that as well now, so right now everyone in the UT System, I think, is going to be ultimately in that database, which will be huge, and that will be fantastic because then there’ll be websites where you can search the entire University of Texas for an expert. And, again, the concept is the same. They want us to be able to find each other more effectively so we can build collaborations with our colleagues at other UT campuses. So at the time, that was the thing. We brought Banner into it, and that was a part of how we were building our connection also with the Cancer Network, because academics is an important component of that. The faculty in our partners become adjunct faculty here, and we want to look for opportunities to connect them academically to us, so including them in research results and having—you know, I think that just makes a lot of sense.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
0:42:57 Now, here’s a situation in which I don’t know where to go. (laughs) So you joined GAP in 2010, and I mentioned kind of the things that I discovered in doing background research, but I imagine that there’s a lot more to the story of how you’ve shepherded GAP and kind of made your own imprint on that. So maybe you could tell me what, for you, are some of the high points of the last four years.
Oliver Bogler, PhD:
0:43:26 I think we’ve covered a lot. I think the one other thing I would mention is—so I’ve tried to do a couple of things. When I joined the group, I found that there were a lot of really good clinical partners in the Network, but I think we wanted to rebalance a little bit with some research partners, so we’ve added a couple of strong research partners, Karolinksa perhaps most prominently in the last several years, and there’s still a few others that we’re talking to. That was sort of a minor thing, because I think it’s good to have a mix. There’s a couple of groups that we’ve talked to which hasn’t come to fruition yet, but that’s the nature of GAP. There’s always many conversations going on and so on. I also introduced some metrics around the criteria I mentioned earlier, so we have the ability a little bit to score people, and we’ve discussed with our advisory group strategies and so on.
Recommended Citation
Rosolowksi, Tacey A. PhD and Bogler, Oliver PhD, "Chapter 16: Global Academic Programs: Building Collaborations Using SciVal" (2014). Interview Chapters. 1576.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1576
Conditions Governing Access
Open
