You can now take advantage of Jisc’s Publications Router service if your institution uses Symplectic Elements as its research information management system. A collaborative pilot study has established that the two systems can work successfully together to help you capture details of your researchers’ articles.

About Publications Router and Symplectic Elements

Publications Router captures content such as research articles from publishers and other providers and delivers it straight into the repositories of institutions to which the authors are affiliated. The resulting notifications consist of rich, authoritative metadata and often the full text of the articles themselves.

Symplectic Elements is a research information management system that enables institutions to collect, collate, and report on research inputs, outputs, outcomes, and professional activities.

Success of joint pilot study

Jisc and Symplectic worked together with the University of Cambridge and Sheffield Hallam University to look at how well Elements could capture details of articles that Router had sent to their repositories. Router currently works with EPrints and DSpace repositories, the platforms used by Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge respectively.

The two pilot institutions used Symplectic’s Repository Tools 2 (RT2) integration module to harvest research outputs from their repositories in order to create new records in Elements or match against existing Elements records. They tested how well this worked for repository records deposited automatically by Router.

The study demonstrated that Router and Elements are technically compatible when used in this way.

As a result, Jisc and Symplectic are now happy to offer this solution to institutions more widely.

Find out more

If you’d like to try this at your institution, we can help you to get started. Please contact us in the first instance on help@jisc.ac.uk, mentioning “Publications Router and Symplectic Elements” in your subject line. It’s also helpful if you can let us know whether your repository is EPrints or DSpace.

We’ll then take you through how the Router service works, including setting up your institution on the service. For information about connecting your repository with Elements and using the Router in combination with Elements please contact Symplectic – support@symplectic.co.uk.