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Extending Open Access monitoring with the Jisc Publications Router

← Back15th January 2020Blog
Extending Open Access monitoring with the Jisc Publications Router 1

In early 2019 Symplectic partnered with Jisc, the University of Cambridge and Sheffield Hallam University to undertake a pilot study to review the technical compatibility of using the Jisc Publications Router together with Symplectic Elements to help UK institutions comply with their open access mandates.

The Jisc Publications Router is an alerting service that automatically sends notifications about research articles to institutions’ repositories. These notifications may include full text of the article, in a version agreed by the publisher, or they may just consist of metadata and are designed to help institution’s prepare for the REF and comply with UK open access mandates. Available to Jisc Members, the Router currently offers integrations with DSpace and EPrints.  

The pilot sought to explore the viability of using the Jisc Publications Router
in conjunction with Elements, by integrating both with the institution’s repository. 

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Our newest repository integrations, based on our Repository Tools 2 (RT2) framework, are rich bi-directional integrations which allow institutions to use Elements to both deposit to and harvest from their institutional repository. Our RT2 harvest functionality establishes the repository as a data source for Elements, allowing us to harvest research outputs from the institution’s repository and match them to existing Elements records. This ensures that Elements maintains an accurate and up-to-date representation of the research outputs in your repository; allowing Elements to provide authoritative open access monitoring and minimises duplicates. 

The pilot sought to test a networked ecosystem approach, bringing together the strengths of the Publications Router and Elements. In the tested set-up, the Publications Router is integrated directly with the institutional repository, which then provides notifications to DSpace and/or EPrints. These notifications become records in the repository which are then harvested into Elements via a Repository Tools 2 connection where they can be automatically matched to existing records in the system. 

By working with two partner institutions, University of Cambridge (DSpace) and Sheffield Hallam University (EPrints), we were able to test the effectiveness of such a method and as a result are pleased to confirm that the pilot successfully demonstrated that the Router and Elements are technically compatible when used in this way.

Another key outcome of this pilot is that it helped us identify ways to guide our clients when they are considering using the Publications Router in conjunction with Elements.

If you would like additional information about how to implement this at your institution, please contact Symplectic Support. 

With this partnership, we have the opportunity to position ourselves as
a world leader in the development of the scholarly ecosystem.

Keith Webster, Dean of University Libraries, Carnegie Mellon

I cannot overstate how pleased we have been.
We have to have confidence to work with a partner
for at least 5 years on a project of this size.

Caleb Smith, Senior Strategy Manager for Research Intelligence & Analytics, University of Michigan

“Faculty need only spend perhaps less than an hour a year to prepare and submit their annual reports.”

Associate Dean, Carnegie Mellon University at Qatar

"Leveraging the interoperability between Symplectic Elements and DSpace has increased policy-driven institutional repository deposits by over 350%."

Ellen Phillips, Open Access Specialist, Boston University

Elements elegantly connected our multi-university system providing a
single source of truth throughout OIEx.

Tim Cain, The Ohio Innovation Exchange (OIEx)

The University measures the individual research activity of academic staff. This Measure of Research Activity (MoRA) requires the collection of publication data from faculty. Symplectic Elements supports this beautifully.

Floris van der Leest, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

[Elements] will help to bring transparency to the richness of thought showcased within non-traditional publications, providing a more holistic representation of faculties’ scholarly work.

Caleb Smith, University of Michigan

Feedback to date has been extremely positive from all levels across the University, with individual academics and colleagues actively promoting the ease of use of the system.

Rachel Baird, Research Policy Analyst, University of Liverpool
Symplectic

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