A brief guide to Symplectic Elements
New to Symplectic?
Symplectic Elements is the database used by the Faculty of Science and Technology to record details of all the academic research outputs of our academic staff. It can also be used to record research, professional and scholarly activities.
What is the difference between ARRO and Symplectic?
ARRO is the Anglia Ruskin Repository for research publications. There are strict rules about what can be put there, the most obvious one being that the author must have been at ARU when the article, monograph etc was published. It is therefore limited in scope.
Symplectic provides access to your entire publication history by searching a large number of online publication databases (e.g.arXiv,DBLP,PubMed, Webof Science and Scopus).
Who is responsible for Symplectic?
The data on the academic staff profile is the responsibility of the member of staff.
In FST Celia Hewetson() and Julia Lane () are currently the system administrators. They will set up your Symplecticprofile and help with basic operational queries.
How to get started
Once your profile has been set up and publications have been found, you should receive an email prompting you to log into Symplectic.
To access your profile, go to . Enter your ARU user ID and password and your home page will appear.
Your publications
The searches undertaken by Symplectic take place automatically once your profile has been set up. You will receive an email when Symplectic finds a new publication which matches your profile. This email will prompt you to either ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ the publication. For example there may be publications that are authored by someone with the same name which you will need to reject. If you find that you are rejecting a lot of publications, your profile may need refining. Help is available via Symplectic or by contacting the system administrators.
What next?
Gradually build up your profile so that in time it will serve as a tool for a variety of functions. It can be used to create your C.V. by recording grants, editorships, board memberships, media appearances etc. It is there to help you.
We shall be running occasional reports to see how things are going and looking to the future we hope to expand its capacity as an aid for our REF submission.
Been a while since you logged on to Symplectic?
If it been some time since you logged into Symplectic you may have publications awaiting your ‘review’. You will find these on your home page when you logged into under the heading ‘My Actions’ you need to accept or reject these publications listed there.
Guides
On your home page you will see in top right hand corner a box which leads you to the Symplectic Quick Start Guide. You may find this helpful for a variety of tasks.