At Symplectic, we support the principles outlined in the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information and are proud of our long-standing commitment to promoting openness in research information management and research more generally. As the research ecosystem continues to shift toward more transparent and accessible practices, we are continuing to evolve our systems to meet the transforming requirements of institutions and research organisations.
We’ve always been ahead of the curve when it comes to open access and open data (see below for some of the ways in which we’ve supported and championed the OA movement throughout our history). As we continue to partner with institutions and the research community, we remain committed to exploring new ways of enhancing open data integration and supporting institutions in their transition to fully open research ecosystems.
How Symplectic supports the Four Barcelona principles:
- We will make openness the default for the research information we use and produce
The Barcelona Agreement states that “as a research community, we have become strongly reliant on closed infrastructures”, and that “openness of research information must be the new norm”.
At Symplectic, openness is a long-term norm that is embedded in our core values. Symplectic Elements is designed to facilitate easy deposit of research outputs – publications and data – into open repositories, enabling compliance with institutional and funder open access mandates. Symplectic Elements has always been a tool that allows researchers to associate themselves with a good quality version of their scholarly record, thereby building an institutional store that is wholly owned by the institution, not by Symplectic or Digital Science. In 2012, Symplectic became a pioneer in ensuring that a Crossref version of each publication record was available to institutions, providing CC0 article metadata for use by the institution, researchers, and their community as needed.
We also recognise that the open research landscape is broader than just publications. Symplectic Elements is designed to manage and represent a wide variety of data categories, from grants and equipment to projects, data and evidence of impact. All the metadata around these objects is owned by the institution for them to make freely and openly available if they wish (see Principle 2). We believe that the future of research information management includes open representations of all these elements (no pun intended), and our software is built to support this more expansive view of the research ecosystem.
- We will work with services and systems that support and enable open research information
The Barcelona Declaration requires of Research Information Management Systems “that all relevant research information can be exported and made open, using standard protocols and identifiers where available”.
Symplectic has a long history of enabling data extraction and interoperability with third-party systems. Every data field in an institution’s Elements instance is available to them for export either through the reporting database functionality or the API. All institutions using Symplectic Elements own and control their data with the freedom to make it open and accessible (‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’), and we are committed to ensuring that clients own their own data (see Onboard and Offboarding).
Symplectic Elements is designed both to consume and output open data, ensuring that institutions can make research outputs – publications, datasets, and more – available to the world, using industry-standard protocols and identifiers. We offer flexible APIs to get data out of the system and the widest range of automated data integrations in the industry (including integration with open infrastructures such as Crossref, ORCID, PubMed and Europe PMC), giving institutions the tools to make openness the default for their research information.
Data Sources in Symplectic Elements
| Metadata | Automated Person Name Based Search | Auto-Link Publications & Grants | Publication Research Metrics | Publication Full-text links | |
| ARXIV | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| CINII | ✓ | ||||
| Crossref | ✓ | ||||
| Dimensions | ✓* | ✓* | ✓* | ✓ | |
| DBLP | ✓ | ||||
| Europe-PMC | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Figshare | ✓ | ||||
| Google Books | ✓ | ||||
| PubMed | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| REPEC | ✓ | ||||
| SSRN | ✓ | ✓ |
*Subject to eligibility (eg. license/membership)
Symplectic also supports integration with other proprietary data sources including Altmetric, MLA, Scopus and Web of Science.
While the Barcelona Agreement does not at present specify a required format for data, Symplectic Elements has a highly configurable data structure which offers organisations flexibility to capture the metadata they need. We have continually updated our stock fields to ensure that we are effectively capturing relevant specialised metadata (such as OA statuses) in line with the evolving needs of organisations in the open-access space. This flexibility ensures that institutions can continue to adapt to new open systems as they emerge, while supporting openness and choice in how research information is sourced, stored, and shared.
- We will support the sustainability of infrastructures for open research information
Supporting open research goes beyond technology: it requires sustainable infrastructure and communities of practice.
As a long-established Research Information Management System used by over 150 organisations around the world, Symplectic Elements is a proven, out-of-the-box solution that allows institutions to avoid the high technical and operational costs often associated with home-grown or open-source alternatives. By offering a robust, well-maintained platform with dedicated technical support, Symplectic ensures that institutions have access to sustainable, scalable infrastructures that enable them to participate fully and reliably in the open research ecosystem.
- We will support collective action to accelerate the transition to openness of research information
Symplectic is committed to working closely with the research community to accelerate the transition to open research. Our involvement in community-driven initiatives, partnerships with open repositories, and long history of facilitating open data practices position us as a long-time leader in the ongoing transition to openness.
Looking Back: Symplectic and Open Access
- 2005: Symplectic Elements was the first research information management system to connect to institutional digital repositories (starting with DSpace), enabling open access (OA) deposit.
- 2008: Joined EuroCRIS and implemented CERIF exports for all data.
- 2010: Membership of the VIVO community – making all Symplectic Elements systems compatible with a linked open data triple store to share data.
- 2011: The ‘Repository Tools’ module was introduced, expanding integration with repositories like EPrints, Hyrax, and Figshare to support open access efforts.
- 2012: Included CrossRef as a data source to ensure the supply of unambiguously CC0 publication metadata to meet institutional use cases.
- 2014: Symplectic became the first Registered Service Provider for VIVO, integrating Elements with the open source semantic web application to create public researcher profiles and expertise portals.
- 2015: Launch of the OA Monitor within Elements, allowing institutions to track and report on OA compliance, providing insight into researchers’ OA engagement.
- 2019: Launch of Symplectic Discovery Module, delivering public profiles that let research information be freely shared by institutions without restrictions.
- 2017: Bidirectional repository integration with automated harvesting.
- 2020s: Enhancements to the OA Monitor expanded tracking to include Gold OA and multi-policy compliance, with added efficiency through bulk actions and tailored workflows for mandates like REF, NIH, and ARC.
You can read more about our history supporting open access and open data here.
Looking Ahead
As the global research landscape continues to evolve, we will continue to investigate and invest in new ways to expand and refine our support for open data sources. We also remain committed to investigating new ways to help automate the capture and exchange of quality research information metadata on behalf of the Symplectic community.
We like to think that the global Symplectic community is a good place to have discussions about other issues relating to open infrastructure. We welcome discussions from all participants in the broader Symplectic community on how to improve our services to meet the needs of the Barcelona Declaration.
In collaboration with our community, we will continue to enhance Symplectic Elements to ensure that it supports the principles of open access and open data at the highest level, while prioritising institutions’ choice and control around data privacy and ownership.