Poster describing and illustrating work undertaken by ULCC and Symplectic to integrate an existing Symplectic Elements Current Research Information System with a new externally available EPrints Open Access repository, including support for harvesting full-text from UK PubMed Central

Jones, Lawrence

McNicholl, Rory

Triggs, Graham

English

ULCC Publications Archive

St George's University of London (SGUL) uses Symplectic Elements to manage research publication data. This 
provides extensive internal functionality for institutional research information and publications management 
activities, but the institution also needed a public Open Access repository for its research outputs.
By installing Symplectic's Repository Tools plug-in, and 
enhancing the EPrints configuration it is now possible to 
use SWORD to integrate the actions of Elements and 
EPrints, keeping the repository up to date allowing 
access to full texts available via Elements.
Inevitably, integrating EPrints and Symplectic Elements 
to meet the institutional requirements presented a 
number of challenges. For example, although 
Symplectic Elements maintains a record of the 
publication activity within SGUL, it does not store any of 
the full text documents itself. Nor does it harvest the full 
text available within the PMC OA subset.
Additionally, Symplectic Elements supports integration 
between the records it holds, and objects in a 
repository, but usually only if the full text is uploaded via 
Symplectic Repository Tools. Records created directly in 
the repository - either by a user, or an automated 
harvester - risk not being integrated with the Elements 
metadata. This can result in:
poor metadata in the repository
repository metadata not kept in sync with 
Symplectic Elements
inability to access full text via Symplectic Elements
academics creating duplicate repository content 
via Symplectic Elements 
To address this, ULCC, working closely with St 
George's and Symplectic, has implemented a 
harvesting routine that begins by utilising Symplectic’s 
Repository Tools data-flow to create a metadata record 
in the repository. The harvester can then attach the full 
text to those records, with the effect that full-texts are 
'harvested' into Elements. The repository also now 
harvests SGUL new full texts from PMC OA subset. 
Lawrence Jones (St George’s, University of London)
Rory McNicholl (University of London Computer Centre)
Graham Triggs (Symplectic Ltd)
ljones@sgul.ac.uk
r.mcnicholl@ulcc.ac.uk
graham@symplectic.co.uk
Integrating an institutional CRIS with an
Open Access Institutional Repository
at St George’s, University of London
http://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/
Example corresponding records
 in Symplectic (above) 
and EPrints (right)
Above: Overview of 
Symplectic/EPrints 
harvesting workflow


Integrating an Institutional CRIS with an OA IR

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