New Online Platform Drives Innovation by Connecting Ohio’s Research Universities with Industry

Today the Ohio Department of Higher Education announced the launch of a new online platform to showcase STEM faculty from across Ohio, drive innovation and increase collaboration opportunities. The Ohio Innovation Exchange (OIEx) will advance ties between industry and academic institutions and assist technology commercialization across and beyond the state of Ohio. The OIEx is an initiative of  Ohio Department of Higher Education and was built through a collaboration between Digital Science and the Ohio Technology Consortium (OH-TECH). The platform features research from with six university partners: Case Western Reserve University, Ohio University, The Ohio State University, Cleveland State University, the University of Akron, and the University of Cincinnati, who were all involved throughout the development process.

OIEx provides free access to more than 8250 faculty members and 900 resources from the six participating universities all via a single searchable online platform. The portal will enable businesses to explore the research expertise of Ohio institutions and will facilitate industry partnerships in an information-driven way. Industry partners will be able to tap into the next generation of workforce and technology licensing opportunities, seed new R&D partnership, and strengthen the supply chain and business development. The scope of OIEx will expand further as other institutions and industry partners join.

“It is critical to our state’s economy that we utilise every aspect of our knowledge and innovation talent across the public and private sectors” said ODHE Chancellor John Carey. “We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve created with OIEx − better connecting the experts and resources at our state research universities to the industries that can utilise them to push their breakthrough ideas to fruition.”

Symplectic has worked closely with the OH-TECH team and our Digital Science colleagues to develop the platform powering the OIEx and to help OH-TECH consolidate and curate data from six universities. It has been a truly collaborative project and we are excited to see it launch.

Our leading research information management system Elements is the data collection and curation solution behind the OIEx. It enables the team managing OIEx to capture, enrich and link data about Ohio’s research activities and surface it in the portal. The front end of the OIEx portal is powered by Dimensions, which as well as surfacing the data, further enriches it to maximise discoverability using automated data analysis and labelling tools. Together Elements and Dimensions ensures that visitors to the OIEX are presented with relevant results and rich, interlinked data.

New Online Platform Drives Innovation by Connecting Ohio’s Research Universities with Industry

Daniel Hook, CEO of Digital Science, adds, “Discovery is at the heart of translating research from the university to impact our society, economy, technology and health.  Connecting experts and practitioners is critical to extend the reach of research. The State of Ohio has shown true vision and leadership in backing this collaborative project to make research in Ohio more discoverable and more open. We are delighted to have been able to support and to help realize this vision.”

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