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Welcome to Elements v5.20!
We're excited to introduce our first Discovery Module visualisation, a collaboration network diagram which highlights interdepartmental research collaboration. We've also added support for researchers to add YouTube Videos on their Discovery Module profiles, allowing them to share videos which showcase their expertise.
We are also very pleased to deliver our last major batch of REF2021 functionality, including new features to support the generation and validation of your REF Submission. We've also added five new REF dashboards to help you monitor your progress as well as a number of additional features to help streamline REF preparations.
The release also includes a range of other enhancements across the system, including numerous pieces of new functionality developed in direct response to community feature requests. Thank you once again to all of our community members who have contributed to this release by contributing feature requests, and giving feedback on planned development.
The full release notes are available to view on the support site, or you can continue reading below. The new version of Elements and associated upgrade instructions can be found in the upgrade forum.
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Discovery Module
Explore Collaboration Networks with the Discovery Module
This release introduces our first data visualisation, an interactive collaboration network diagram, to the Elements Discovery Module. The new visualisation has been designed to highlight interdepartmental collaborations within your organisation and will also enhance the discoverability of your researchers by introducing new ways to navigate between profiles.
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Image: An animated gif showing the key features of the collaboration network visualisation tool
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Visitors to the Discovery Module can interact with the visualisation to explore each researcher's interdepartmental collaboration network. They can:
- Click on a node to view more information about each researcher including a link to their full Discovery Module profile.
- Hover over a node to see the links between each researcher and their collaborators within the diagram.
- Toggle between the researcher's direct and extended networks to see just the researcher's own co-authors or an extended view also incorporating the collaborators of those co-authors.
- Change the size of the nodes to represent either:
- The number of collaborations the researcher shares with other researchers in the diagram.
- The total number of outputs/publications belonging to each researcher (excluding 'private' publications), or
- The degree of separation between the researcher the network belongs to and their collaborators.
- Hover over a group on the Department Key to highlight on the diagram which researchers are associated with that department.
Each network diagram is generated based on the publications associated with the researcher's profile within the Discovery Module (i.e. it excludes unclaimed publications and publications marked as 'private' within the Elements Publications module). The diagram will be enabled for all researchers which have two or more collaborators with public profiles within your Discovery Module. In this context, a collaboration is defined to be when two or more researchers share an association (e.g. co-author, translator, editor, contributor) with a single 'publication'. Each collaborator is colour coded by department, as defined for your Discovery Module.
Use of this new functionality is configurable via a new global setting which allows organisations to enable/disable the diagram for all researchers. For further information about enabling this new functionality, please contact Symplectic Support.
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Display YouTube Videos in the Discovery Module
Videos have become another key way to demonstrate research expertise and it is increasingly common for Researchers to be featured on media broadcasts or even create their own videos to promote their research to a wider audience. So we are pleased to introduce new functionality which allows researchers to add YouTube Videos to their Discovery Profile.
Our new interactive video carousel allows visitors to watch videos associated with the profile directly within the Discovery Module by clicking on a 'View Media' link on the researcher's profile page or the Discovery Module search results page.
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Image: A researcher's Discovery Module Profile playing a YouTube video with auto-generated subtitles
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We have updated the colour palettes available for dashboards, To support this, we've introduced a new optional Media section on the Elements Profile Page. Once enabled, your users will be able to add YouTube urls, labels and accessible descriptions, ready to be pushed over and displayed on their Discovery Profile. For assistance enabling this feature, please contact Symplectic Support.
Other Discovery Module improvements
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To improve discoverability, grant titles have been added to the Discovery Module's search index. To see the full list of data included in the Discovery Module Search Index, please see the "Elements data used by the Search function of the Discovery Module" on the Support Site.
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The Discovery Module can now be integrated with DIRECT2Experts, a federated search tool for biomedical research expertise. For assistance enabling this integration, please contact Symplectic Support.
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A new global configuration setting has been added to allow organisations to select either date or type as the default sort order of publications, grants, professional activities and teaching activities displayed in user profiles in the Discovery Module. If 'type' is selected, the Discovery Module will reflect the 'type' sort order set in Elements via the relevant object 'types' page. Please note, for this change to take effect, all data must be reloaded into the Discovery Module.
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Organisations can now rename the 'About' tab from a list of options.
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To improve SEO and to help consolidate duplicate search engine results for profiles, we have introduced canonical URL tags.These will consolidate results relating to specific tabs within the search results to prioritise the core profile URL.
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The Discovery Module will now display any available dates within the following Profile sections: Organisation appointments, Academic appointments, Non-academic appointments, Degrees, Certifications and Postgraduate Training. Previously, if there was only a "start date" no dates were shown.
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REF2021
This release includes our last major batch of REF 2021 functionality including the generation of the REF submission XML file and a new REF validation stock report. We've added five new REF dashboards as well as new functionality to assist with tracking REF2 physical and electronic output submission. We've also added new functionality to help manage the process of restricting access to specific units as the submission is finalised and made other additions to a number of existing screens, stock reports, and bulk actions.
Generation of REF submission XML file
From version 5.20, System administrators and Exercise Managers can generate their REF2021 submission XML file via a new REF2021 page in the Assessment Module. The page includes a range of parameters to allow you to choose which data will be included in the generated XML file including whether you wish to export data for the entire submission or per unit.
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Image: REF submission screen set to generate an XML of only confirmed REF1 and REF2 data.
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Further details on Elements' REF2021 submission functionality is available in the REF section of our support site.
REF dashboards
Building on the new dashboard functionality released in 5.19, we have added five new REF dashboards to help you monitor the progress of each Unit's submission.
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Image: REF Submission Summary dashboard showing progress towards required number of REF 2 attributions.
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Each dashboard provides an overview of a different aspect of your submission, in terms of progression towards the requirements, or the indicative quality. They also help to give you a sense of the composition of your submission, distribution of various properties, and will highlight key data errors or inconsistencies that should be resolved prior to submission.
The new dashboards include:
Further information on these dashboards is available in the REF section of our support site. Please note, use of dashboards requires a licence for Elements Analytics Module.
REF submission validation report
We have introduced a new REF Validation report, available at both the exercise definition and unit levels. This report allows administrators to export a detailed list of validation errors and warnings in the submission. For further details please see the REF section of our support site.
Tracking REF2 physical and electronic output submission
We've added new functionality to help you to track the process of collecting the electronic and physical copies of outputs for submission to the REF team.
A new Output Submission Management tab has been added to the REF2 form, which allows you to track the status of the collection process. We have also introduced the required REF2 'Output format' field on this tab. For further details, please see the REF section of our support site.
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Image: REF2 Output submission management tab
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Unit lock out
In order to help institutions to manage the submission finalisation process, this release includes a new configuration option for each Unit to restrict edit access to only Exercise Managers, Assessment Module administrators, and System Administrators. For further details, please see the REF section of our support site.
Improvements to key REF Exercise Management pages
We have made some updates to the Manage Units, Manage REF1 Researchers, and Manage REF2 Research Outputs screens (including some new and some modified filters) to help you better monitor submission progress, accuracy, and completeness, and to view certain properties without needing to open the individual record.
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Image: The updated version of the Manage REF1 Researchers screen
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REF Stock Report updates
We have also updated existing stock reports to capture recent updates to the REF data model including:
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REF2 Research Outputs
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Added columns for relevant bibliographic metadata
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Added column for WoS ID (in relevant Units (i.e. those where Citation data is to be used))
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Added columns for new output submission management fields
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Added a new feature that highlights those REF1 Researchers that selected the REF2 output for the exercise
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REF Manager Publications
We have also improved the performance of the REF2 Outputs report in "All units" mode.
Bulk Action Template updates
We have updated some of the bulk action templates:
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The Manage submission statuses and REF1 Author contribution details bulk action templates have been updated to also accept User Proprietary ID and Username as identifiers.
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The REF2 metadata bulk action template has been updated to enable the bulk editing of the new Output submission management fields.
Other improvements
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Flag Category B staff on the REF2 form, and REF2 stubs on the Manage REF2 Research outputs and Manage Selections screens
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Flag Double-weighted, Pending, and Reserve outputs in various locations (e.g. Manage REF2 Research Outputs screen)
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Display Proprietary ID in the REF2 Attribution drop down
Impact of REF2021 postponement on planned upgrades
Last week the REF team announced that the REF2021 exercise was being postponed until further notice due to the impact of COVID-19. As we were already in the final stages of testing, we continued with our planned v5.20 release.
Prior to this announcement, numerous institutions had indicated they planned to upgrade soon after this release. So as to allow us to plan support services accordingly, we are keen to hear from institutions using our REF2021 functionality as to what, if any, impact the announced postponement will have on their planned upgrades and ongoing REF preparations. We would like to encourage you to join us at our upcoming Elements REF webinar (registration details are available here) for a discussion about this and a demo of our latest functionality. Alternatively you can contact us by emailing ref2021@symplectic.co.uk
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ORCID Write Integration
New config option to allow only verified manual records to be sent to ORCID
In response to community feedback following the release of the ORCID write functionality in December 2019, it is now possible for administrators to choose to allow only verified manual records to be sent to ORCID. This setting can be enabled by system administrators on the ORCID Data Source Management page. When enabling this functionality, administrators should also ensure they enable the option to 'Show verification to all users' on the Global Settings page, which introduces a new 'Verified' filter to the My Publications page. When this feature is enabled, the ORCID Settings page is updated to ensure users are accurately informed that only verified publications will be sent to ORCID.
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Image: The ORCID Settings page telling a user how many of their publications are and are not verified and how many will be sent to ORCID.
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Updates to the matching algorithm for introductions & editorials
We have made some updates to the Elements matching algorithm to improve how we manage publications with titles containing the words introduction or editorial or which have a title shorter than 35 characters.
Historically these items have been prone to erroneous matches as without identifiers, the very short titles make it difficult to confirm whether or not it is a 'good' match to an existing item. These items will now be treated as special cases and will be excluded from being automatically matched to other records within Elements.
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All 'integer' date columns in the reporting database converted to use the SQL 'date' type
As announced in our December 2019 release notes, upon upgrading to v5.20 all columns representing dates in the Reporting Database using the SQL Server INT column type (such as the [Reporting Date 1] and [Reporting Date 2] columns of the [Publication] table) will be migrated to columns of the same name that represent dates using the SQL Server DATE column type. This data has been restructured to make it easier for reporting and analytics tools to analyse dates in the reporting database.
If you use custom SQL queries, reports or dashboards, or integrated with the Reporting Database directly, you may need to update your templates/integrations in response to this change. More information about this change and how you can prepare for it can be found in this support article.
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Other Improvements
- Web of Science citation counts will now display a 'zero' on publications which have a Web of Science record without any citations.
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OA Monitor Reports will now include 'Library status'' notes.
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Annual Collection Checklist functionality is now available via the Reporting database and the Elements API (both to update checklist items and export already entered data).
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The RT2 crosswalk framework has been updated to make significant performance improvements.
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Three new label schemes including the ''Research Condition and Disease Categorization'', ''UK HRCS Health Category'' and ''UK HRCS Research Activity Code'' ontologies are now available to be added manually or via the API. These labels could previously only be applied via the Dimensions integration.
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The ORCID settings page has been updated with improved guidance text to make the expected behaviour of this integration clearer to users.
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Security Improvement for self-hosted customers: In previous versions of Elements, self-hosted customers could choose to not set the system password for a new instance of Elements, in which case Elements will apply a "default password". From v5.20, Elements will no longer support the use of default passwords for the 'System' account and any previously applied default passwords will be automatically deleted. If you have been using the default password, please contact Symplectic Support who can assist you to reset it.
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Fixes
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The ORCID Write integration has been updated to prevent duplicate identifiers being sent to ORCID.
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An issue on the Discovery Module affecting the display of some email addresses has now been fixed.
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The language competency value for Maori has been updated to include the macron. Existing instances of this label must be reapplied to display with the macron.
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Fixed an issue for RT2 Hyrax integrations which impacted the ability to enable differential harvest.
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RT2 Figshare integrations were displaying an incorrect status for items which were under review. This has been fixed.
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The Dimensions data source integration has been adjusted to improve performance and minimise errors.
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Fixed an issue in the Annual Collection Module where the 'Main Chapter' checkbox would not be saved if there were unclaimed authors linked to the nominated publication.
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Fixed an issue with user profile labelling where some browsers (Chrome, Edge) were not allowing all possible label values to be displayed or selected.
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The 'Links between other objects' basic report has been updated to resolve an issue with exporting links between the same type of object.
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Exports from the My <Objects> page (eg. My Publications) has been updated so they will now correctly export the user's preferred records.
- The Exports from the My Grants page had an issue which could lead to incomplete exports. This has been fixed
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As always, we recommend that you regularly review our End of Support Announcements for information about upcoming end of support in Elements for various technologies. We have recently added announcements that as of Elements v6.0 (anticipated in late Q3 2020), Elements will no longer support Windows Server 2012 or the use of IE11.
We hope you and your teams are all well. Please remember, If you require assistance during your upgrade, please remember we are here to help.
Best wishes
The Symplectic Team
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