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Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Research Funding and Strategic Initiatives
 

Symplectic Elements is the University’s research information management system, and provides an environment internal to Cambridge within which researchers can create a profile, share information and easily build a CV based on the inputted information. See more at:

https://www.research-information.admin.cam.ac.uk/what-information-available

Originally implemented to help with the management of submissions to REF 2014, Symplectic Elements now provides the foundations of research information management systems across the University, connecting information from a wide range of platforms. Symplectic automatically searches information across a growing range of data sources and presents it for approval by the researcher. Once approved by the researcher, the data are linked to other metadata providers such as Altmetric, and searchable grant data through Dimensions.

Researchers can link Symplectic accounts to their unique ORCID identifier to share selective information with people beyond the University of Cambridge community.

Complementary and Connected: Symplectic and Altmetric

Symplectic Elements is linked to the alternative metrics provided by Altmetric for Institutions to provide a more rounded picture of the attention research receives. Altmetric captures and links to tweets, blog posts, policy documents, news stories, videos and other content that mentions scholarly articles on a daily basis, in order to provide a more granular breakdown of an article’s public reception and a measure of reach and digital impact which complements the traditional metrics of academic citations and Impact Factors already available in Symplectic.  Both publication data and structural elements, such as defined groups of users, are now synchronised daily between Symplectic and Altmetric, removing the need for duplication and enriching the information contained in both systems.

What could Symplectic be used for in the future?

Symplectic Elements was a central part of the REF 2014 submission process and will be the primary source of research information for the next REF process. Additional functionality such as a CV builder, as well as more diverse data sources and reporting tools, are currently under investigation. Updates will be published on the Research Information Website when available at: http://www.research-information.admin.cam.ac.uk/.

Symplectic’s developers are currently in discussions with both RCUK and ResearchFish regarding the potential to upload the data captured in Symplectic in bulk to the ResearchFish system. Based on a positive outcome, additional work (mapping) would need to be achieved before both systems could be linked. Please note this will not affect the advice for PIs in the 2015 census period.

For more information, see: http://www.research-information.admin.cam.ac.uk/what-information-available/symplectic-elements.

Since October 2015 a programme of work has been underway in the School of Arts and Humanities, in conjunction with the schedule of University Strategic Research Reviews to ensure that all Arts and Humanities publications are captured on this system. As the details of many of the publications in the Arts and Humanities need to be manually uploaded to Symplectic, the School Librarian will be able to provide support and advise on this and will be in contact in advance of each Research Review. Symplectic will then provide comprehensive information on the research activity across the School to support planning, analysis, interdisciplinary grants and network opportunities.

Contact the Research Information Office (researchinformation@admin.cam.ac.uk) or the Arts and Humanities School Librarian Libby Tilley (eat21@cam.ac.uk) for advice on Symplectic.