Symplectic Elements Product Update: Release v5.21

We’re excited to share our latest release, Elements v5.21!

Our second release for 2020, Elements v5.21 introduces some important updates to core functionality within Elements which is used by our community around the world.

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Introducing automatically managed reporting dates

We have redesigned the way we create and update reporting dates to reduce administrative burden and maximise data completeness. 

Reporting dates provide a consistent set of dates which can be used for reporting and organising your data within Elements. A reporting date is a ‘master’ date for an output or activity within Elements (e.g. a publication, grant, teaching activity or professional activity) and until now, reporting dates were set once by the system when an item was first created, and needed to be updated manually.

We’ve introduced new functionality to automatically maintain Reporting dates, recalculating them as new information becomes available  (eg. additional records are added to the system) in line with new configuration settings which allow organisations to define their own ‘date precedence’. Together, this new functionality ensures Elements can offer accurate reporting throughout the scholarly communications lifecycle. 

 

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View Stock Dashboards

Building on the recent enhancements to dashboard functionality within Elements, in Elements v5.21 we have added the ability to view Elements’ stock dashboards to the Elements ‘core’ licence, so that all organisations using Elements can use our core set of web-based interactive dashboards. This new functionality will help administrators to quickly and easily explore trends relating to the data collected in Elements as well as monitor the use of Elements at your institution. 

Dashboard Designer Upgrade

We have upgraded the DevExpress dashboard designer (underpinning the Elements dashboard functionality) from version 19.1.7 to version 20.1.3. This upgrade introduces a number of improvements to the dashboard designer including both new formatting options as well as performance improvements.

 

More REF Improvements

This release includes some additional REF2021 functionality developed in response to client feedback as well as updated guidance from the REF team including an additional report to assist administrators with preparing their REF data for submission. 

More information

To learn more about these and access the full release notes, please visit our support site. If you are not a client of Symplectic, but would like to learn more about Elements’ functionality, please contact us

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