New HERDC module released in Elements

We are very proud to announce that Elements is the first ever Research Information Management System to offer a HERDC module.

The HERDC module was designed in partnership with clients in Australia and has just been released from beta after completing development and testing. The module will aid universities in Australia with the HERDC (Higher Education Research Data Collection) exercise that takes place on an annual basis.

In 2013, an estimated $1.67 billion of funding will be made available to eligible Australian higher education providers (HEPs) by the Department of Innovation. To be eligible, each institution is required to submit research income and research publications data for the year to secure their funding. Elements’ new HERDC module has been designed specifically to enable the capture, nomination, verification and reporting of research outputs required for submission in this annual exercise.

“One of Symplectic’s core beliefs is the best solutions are built in partnership with clients”, says Daniel Enright, Business Analyst at Symplectic. “Working closely with our clients in Australia throughout the development of the HERDC module afforded the team immediate feedback from those with first-hand experience of preparing HERDC returns. We’re really pleased with the result and look forward to receiving additional feedback from those now making use of the module in their live systems.”

The new HERDC module allows for the apportionment and allocation of publication data as outlined by HERDC guidelines, all within the intuitive interface of Elements. New user roles, assessment screens, labelled actions, system messaging and HERDC-specific reports help streamline research information management for Australian institutions.

“The audit requirements of the HERDC process were well documented, but the administrative effort associated with capturing the underlying data was less clear”, says Jonathan Breeze, CEO of Symplectic. “Working closely with multiple Australian clients has allowed us to introduce a configurable solution capable of addressing the needs of the HERDC exercise and its associated administrative effort.”

The HERDC module was made available in Elements v4.4 to all Australian clients, with plans for further enhancements in the coming months.

If you want to find out more about the release, or to upgrade your system, please head to our support site.

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