Pure — open science
White paper

Navigating open science withthe support of a RIMSFor research management and library professionals,
RIMS, such as Elsevier’s Pure, offer unique opportunities
to demonstrate their value in an open science world

Pure is a versatile centralized system that facilitates evidence-based approaches to your institution’s research andcollaboration strategies, assessment exercises and business decisions. It enables building reports, performanceassessments, managing researcher profiles, networking, expertise discovery and more – with less administrative burden.

Introduction

In this white paper, we explore the growth of open scienceand consider its implications for research management
and library professionals. Specifically, we examine how aresearch information management system (RIMS), suchas Elsevier’s Pure, can help these roles respond to theopportunities and challenges associated with fourcommon open science use cases:

Monitoring and managing
research data

Supporting and tracking
open access publishing

Increasing the visibility of
researchers and their work
Evaluating progress towards
open science goals

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The growth of open science
While definitions of the term ‘open science’ vary, most agree that it describes new
and more transparent ways of working, collaborating and sharing, often supported bytechnology. A key goal is to ensure that everyone can access, participate in and benefit
from science. Another plus point for many is that open science has the potential tocombat the rising concerns over reproducibility in research.1

Two of the most regularly mentioned strands of open science
are open access publishing and open data, but it encompasses a
broader range of research and learning needs; for example, open
educational resources, open citations and open peer review.
The move towards open science has been gathering pace inrecent years, driven, in part, by national and regional initiatives.
A number of these have been introduced by funding bodies;for example:• Awards issued by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) contain conditions
around the sharing of research data and the communication
and accessibility of research results.
• The Australian Research Council (ARC) requires applicants
to include a data management plan in their submission, andencourages researchers to deposit the research data generated
by ARC funding in publicly accessible repositories.
Specifically, many funders now require research findings tobe published open access (OA) in some form. For some, thisis linked to their membership of cOAlition S, originally anorganization of largely European funding organizations
and charitable bodies. Back in 2018, cOAlition S launched
Plan S, an initiative designed to make full and immediate open
access to all research publications a reality. The past few years
have seen the influence of cOAlition S grow globally, withmembership expanding to include international and North
American funders, along with the World Health Organization.
Transformative agreements are one of the routes thatcOAlition S supports for achieving its 100 percent OA target.
These agreements commonly describe a shift in the contracts
drawn up between publishers and institutions or consortia,
from ‘pay to read’ to ‘pay to publish and read’. This has createda raft of new considerations for institutions and the library andresearch management teams responsible for implementing
the agreements.

Global crises, such as climate change and the COVID-19
pandemic, have also seen support for open science surge;
many believe it is the key to finding solutions to these pressing
societal issues. In particular, the sharing of research data
has grown dramatically; for example, during the pandemic,
healthcare researchers and workers were posting information
online with a “new sense of transparency and at speeds that havenot been seen before.” 2 More than three quarters (76 percent)of COVID-19 publications were published open access between
January and October 2020, compared to 43 percent of diabetes
and 40 percent of dementia papers over the same period.3 The
posting of preprints (preliminary research papers that are sharedpublicly before peer-review and publication in an academic
journal) has also risen sharply.
In response to this new and unprecedented level of openness,
the US’ Office of Science and Technology Policy issued an
update to its policy guidance in August 2022, designed to
improve public access to federally-funded research results. The
update noted that COVID-19 had been a “powerful case study on
the benefits of delivering research results and data rapidly to thepeople.” And it added that: “The insights of new and cuttingedge research stemming from the support of federal agencies
should be immediately available—not just in moments of crisis,
but in every moment.” 4

For many library and research
management professionals, finding
effective ways to track, capture andreport on open research outputs,
while checking that funder andinstitutional policies have been met,is proving challenging.

3New research landscape = new opportunities
According to the global library organization OCLC, theaggregation, curation and use of information about research,commonly known as research information management (RIM),
offers libraries “new opportunities to support institutionaland researcher goals.” This is because RIM intersects
with “traditional library services in discovery, acquisition,dissemination, and analysis of scholarly activities.” And it does
this through faculty workflows, partners, and, importantly,
institutional data systems.5

These data and the insights they generate can be used byinstitutions to enhance research strategy, global reputation,international collaboration and funding.

These systems that support research information management,
or RIMS, work by integrating and linking the full range of
research elements and processes that comprise the researchecosystem. They also centrally store that data and provide
access to it through a single interface for:For the library professionals and research administrators who
manage these systems, RIMS are proving a powerful tool tosupport institutional open science goals. For many librarians,
using them in this way has enabled them to demonstrate
their expertise in new ways, grow their existing role andresponsibilities, and showcase the value they add.

Analysis

ReportingResearchshowcasing andcommunication

Crucially, RIMS are playing an
increasingly important role in supporting
the ongoing shift towards open science.

In this white paper, we explore four key open science use
cases and consider how Elsevier’s research information
management system Pure can help to address them. We also
hear how institutions have been leveraging Pure to comply
with new open science mandates, workflows and reporting
requirements, advance open science, and reduce
the administrative burden on their teams.

4Use case 1

Monitor and manage
research data

The term ‘research data’ generally
refers to the results of observations
or experiments that validate researchfindings, but which aren’t published aspart of a journal article. Research data
can include raw data, processed data,
software, algorithms, protocols, methods
and materials.

The past few years
have seen rapid growthin the appetite formaking research data
publicly available.
This has been led, in part, by mounting
support for open science, concerns overresearch integrity, and the launch of
initiatives such as the FAIR Principles; a
set of guidelines that seek to make digitalassets Findable, Accessible, Interoperable
and Reusable. At the same time, many
want to see researcher evaluation expand
beyond article and citation counts toinclude factors such as societal impact,
and their support for open science –including open research data.

submission, which informs the reader
whether the data behind a research
project can be accessed and, if so, where
and how. Institutions are also launching
their own research data policies, withmany requiring research data to be madepublicly available, wherever possible.

In response, the number of open
data repositories has risen sharply,
along with open data requirements
attached to research funding.
And many involved in the researchecosystem have adopted new researchdata guidelines and practices. For
example, several funders now ask
researchers to not only publish dataassociated with experiments, but todeliver detailed data management plans
alongside their funding application.
Publishers, such as Elsevier, now often
encourage researchers to include a data
availability statement (also called a data
access statement) with their journal

For institutions, these policies can create
challenges - tracking their researchers’
compliance with research data funding
mandates, and understanding where
their research data has been hosted,
isn’t always easy. But, as we’ve seen, thepolicies can also create opportunities.
This is particularly true for library andresearch management professionals, who
are already experts in so many of the skills
required for good data management,from ensuring and monitoring quality
to dissemination and discoverability. In
addition, they are experienced in using
the systems so important to research data
management, including RIMS.

Monitoring andmanaging
research data

Increasing thevisibility of
researchers andtheir work

Supporting andtracking open accesspublishing

Evaluating
progress towards
open science goals

5How Pure can help
Pure enables institutions to document the research data
being published by their researchers and, importantly, link
datasets to individual researchers. This brings a range ofbenefits, including:

The ability to
publicly demonstrate
the breadth of datathat institutions are
generating and theircommitment toopen sharing.

The option toincorporate thedata into researcher
evaluation processes.

Insights into which
external repositories
researchers are using.

Opportunities toenrich existing
research analyses.

Access to data requiredfor compliance with
reporting requirements
at a national, regional or
institutional level.

But Pure not only captures research datasets, it also tracks
their relationships to other research outputs. For example, ithighlights which research articles a dataset is related to, which
grant, and the publications it has been mentioned in. Purealso helps institutions understand whether a dataset is an
iteration of an earlier version.
In addition, Pure offers deep integration with external open
access (OA) databases and open data repositories. For
example, Pure exchanges metadata with OpenAIRE, the Open
Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe; this makes
datasets more available and (re)usable and helps institutions
comply with requirements from funders, such as theEuropean Union.
To enable the enrichment, monitoring and managementof datasets for OA compliance, including with OpenAIRE’s
mandatory fields, Pure enables users to add license
information at the record and file level. And the OpenAIRE
compliance check feature makes it easy for institutions toconfirm whether a particular dataset meets the organization’s
requirements (see figure 1).

Fig. 1 The OpenAIRE dataset access and compliance overview screen in Pure.

Pure is also integrated with DataCite, a platform that seeks to improve data citation.
This integration enables Pure to indirectly harvest datasets from DataCite. When
integrated with Elsevier’s Data Monitor, Pure can directly import datasets from
DataCite and automatically harvest the associated metadata, saving institutions muchtime and manual effort ( for further details on this functionality see Appendix, Link 1).

+

Pure is also one of a small number of DataCite registered service providers, a statusthat enables researchers and research managers to register (create) DOIs in DataCite
directly from Pure. This ensures that their datasets are not only discoverable, but thatthey can be cited and recognized as part of the institution’s body of work.

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Drawing on the power of the RI portfolio
Pure can also be integrated with other solutions in Elsevier’s
Research Intelligence portfolio, empowering the sharing ofcontent between platforms. In the case of research data, there
are two key solutions:••which draws on millions of research data records from morethan 2,000 generalist and domain-specific repositories to find,clean, enrich and deliver an institution’s entire researchdata output.

a secure and trusted repository to publish datasets following
the FAIR principles.

Pure has the ability to automatically import dataset metadatafrom both solutions and link them to specific people,
organizational units, publications and other research entities.
These data can also be showcased in the Pure Portal.

“Now that Data Monitor is integrated with Pure,
our Pure Portal is starting to show a much fuller
picture of our research. It makes Pure more
complete in all the aspects important to a modern
researcher. And it’s visible for everyone to see.”– Christina Elsenga, Scientific Information Specialist,
University of Groningen, The Netherlands (taken from thecase study How Groningen is drawing on the insights gleaned
from Data Monitor to shape strategic thinking)Case study

Leveraging Pure for research data management

Read the full case study

In 2019, the Australian Code for the
Responsible Conduct of Research cameinto effect, with guidelines around how
research data are stored, accessed andshared. Importantly, it places the onus ofcompliance on institutions andindividual researchers.

• Data Monitor

In response, Australia’s University ofCanberra partnered with Elsevier’s
Integration Delivery Services team tobuild a sophisticated research data
management framework with Pureat its heart.

• Infonetica (automates and streamlines
processes related to research ethics
throughout the project lifecycle)

The framework draws on Pure’s deep
integration capabilities to connect itwith other systems and platforms that
automate key tasks throughout the
research lifecycle, saving researchers
time and increasing compliance.
The other systems are:

• Digital Commons Data
• ReDBox (helps universities collectinformation and metadata about
research projects across the institution)

The result is an end-to-end andstreamlined research data management
process for all researchers at the
University of Canberra. This empowers
them to create high-quality data
management plans (and implementthem), and reduces the timespent complying with researchdata requirements.

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Use case 2

Support and track
open access publishing

When an article is published open access(OA), it is made freely available for others
to access and, if applicable, reuse. How it
can be repurposed is decided by a license,
e.g., one of the Creative Commons
copyright licenses. As we’ve seen, funders
are increasingly driving uptake of open
science, and, in many cases, that involves
requiring research articles to be published
OA in some form. But there is also anappetite among researchers and their
institutions for open access – somestrongly believe that research funded bytaxpayers should be freely accessible tothose taxpayers, while others see it as
a way to ensure that researchers fromless developed countries can access vital
information. For some, open access offers
a useful route to ensuring their own work
is more widely read and potentially cited.

Whatever their motivation, researchers wanting to publish open access have a variety ofjournal OA models to choose from. These include:• Fully gold journal: Every article is published under the 'gold' OA model, whichmeans it is immediately, permanently and freely available to everyone. The
publishing costs are covered by the author paying an article publishing charge (APC),
which varies per journal.
• Hybrid journal: Largely funded by subscription fees, these titles also offer authors
the option to pay an APC to publish their individual article (gold) open access.
• Diamond or platinum journal: Every article is published (gold) open access. The
journal receives sponsorship or subsidies that enable it to make publishing andreading free.
• Delayed open access journal: The final version of the article is free to access in a
subscription journal after an embargo period, which varies per journal.
• Green open access (self-archiving): The author can post online the peer-reviewed
version (not the final version) of their subscription article after an embargo period,
which varies per journal.
• Bronze open access: Generally, no APC is paid, but the publisher makes the article
freely available to read, either immediately or following an embargo. However, thearticle usually lacks a formal license for reuse.

Monitoring andmanaging
research data

Supporting andtracking open accesspublishing

Increasing thevisibility of
researchers andtheir work

Evaluating
progress towards
open science goals

8In addition, researchers have the option to share their research
via preprint servers, (typically gold) open access digital archives
or repositories that host these early and unreviewed ‘preprints’of research articles. Because there are no editorial services
provided, authors aren’t charged an APC. As discussed, use of
these channels has rocketed since the pandemic; for example,
Nature reported that of the 100,000+ pandemic-related articles
published in 2020, more than 30,000 were preprints.6
For many institutions, open access publication targets are now
an important element of their research strategic plans. For theirresearch management teams and libraries, being able to track
and report on progress towards these targets is essential. So
too is the ability to easily trace and import their researchers’ OA
content into other systems, such as institutional repositories, andmonitor their compliance with funding body OA mandates.
Also vital is having the knowledge at their fingertips to respondto researcher enquiries around institutional and funder OA
polices, and OA publication options.

This is an area in which the RIMS can play a vital role.
As the OCLC notes:“RIM systems are increasingly
supporting the open access deposit
and discovery of locally produced
research publications anddatasets… This may be facilitatedthrough RIM workflows that
support researcher self-archiving
into a separate repository, manual
support by the library, use of the
RIM system itself as a repository,
or in combination.” 59How Pure can help

1. Find and import OA content
Pure is integrated with key open access databases. These include:• Unpaywall: An open database of 46,288,226* free scholarly articles• CORE: Described as the world’s largest aggregator of open access papers• DOAJ: The Directory of Open Access Journals containing 8,495,740* records
In addition, it pulls content from the preprint servers bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv and SSRN.
Pure can automatically import metadata on open access articles from these sources,
removing the need for librarians and/or research teams to manually locate OA
publications ( for further details on this functionality see Appendix, Link 2). This not only
saves teams time, but reduces the risk of data duplicates and errors creeping in.

2. Track (and encourage) compliance with OA requirements
Pure has a range of features designed to help institutions ensure their researchers aremeeting OA policies and mandates.
The terms of those OA requirements – whether institutional or funder – can vary
widely. Some want the research to be made immediately and freely available under thegold open access publishing model. Others specify that it must be accessible withina certain timeframe following publication; for example, in the case of the US funder
NIH, the article must be posted to its PubMed Central database within 12 monthsof publication. Other policies simply require that an earlier version of the article isdeposited in a publicly accessible repository.
As we’ve seen, Pure can help institutions locate their OA publications – a crucial firststep on the road to OA mandate compliance. But it can also help in other importantways. For example, an increasing number of libraries and research offices are turning
to their institutional repository (IR) to comply with the public sharing aspect of OA
policies. Full text OA articles loaded to Pure can be automatically imported into the IR,
greatly reducing the administrative burden for librarians and researchers.
Through its reporting module, Pure enables institutions to monitor their researchers’
open access outputs and their compliance with relevant policies. These OA reports canalso be used externally; for example, for government or funder assessments.

“Pure’s strong data modeland user-friendliness has
made it a popular resource on
campus. It is not only saving
librarians’ time by enablingthem to collate reports
efficiently and with ease, it’salso helping build relationships
across campus, delivering
benefits such as improved
communication and support,
and a clearer overview of
research activities.”– Jan Fransen, Service Lead for
Researcher and Discovery Systems,
University of Minnesota, U.S.
(Retired) | Founding member of thePure North American User Group[Pure] is as easy to use as
Facebook… Lots of featuresare very, very useful on theplatform, but from…anadministrator perspective,
one of the best systems is thereport. It’s helping my life
when I have to deliver some
reports to a dean, or to auser, or to the director of theplatform.”– Bernard Detrembleur, ResearchInformation Manager,
University of Namur, Belgium* This data was extracted on January 20, 2023.

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Pure’s open access report workspace displays a variety of relevant OA-related data,such as the OA status of a journal and its APC. As with all Pure’s reporting workspaces,
it also enables institutions to create ‘data stories’, and visualizations that provide new
insights into the data. For example, it is possible to see how OA outputs are distributed
among different organizational units, departments or research groups, and to discover
how many outputs have available electronic versions.

Access to file

Open: 44.2%

Embargoed: 1.2%
Closed: 0.4%
Restricted: 0.2%

Public access to file
Unknown
Open
Embargoed
ClosedUnknown: 54.0%

Retricted

Fig. 2A sample data story
visualization created
for a Pure report.
This example shows
the OA status of
an institution’s
publications.

Fig. 3A sample data story
table created for a
Pure report. This
example features
OA data for journals
that the institution’s
researchers havepublished in, which
also have a policy
summary in Sherpa
Romeo.

And Pure’s overview screen ensures administrators can easily scan the open accessstatus of all research outputs in the system ( for further details on this functionality see
Appendix, Link 3).

Fig. 4
Pure overview
screen showing thearticle availabilityof an institution’s
research outputs.

11This feature, along with the range of OA-related filters in Pure, makes it simple
to determine which articles don’t have an openly accessible copy available.
Fig. 5
Pure has a wide
range of filters thatadministrators can use
to track and manage
OA content. These
include OA statusfilters (left) and OA
policy filters (right).

Pure administrators can also use these options to swiftly identify articles missing links,
DOIs or files.
To improve open access compliance, Pure administrators have the option to trigger
automated ‘nudge’ messages, which remind researchers to add full-text files to content
that is potentially OA. The reminder title and message body can be customized to point
researchers to their own institution's resources.

Fig. 6
Pure offers
administrators theoption to ‘nudge’
researchers to upload
their electronic files
using scheduled email
reminders (top) withcustomized email
headers and texts(bottom).

And to make tracking of OA licenses simpler for institutions, when loading their articles
to Pure, researchers can indicate which commercial or non-commercial Creative
Commons license they selected – the list includes URLs to access the terms of eachlicense. Other license types (and associated URLs) can be manually input. Where license
information is available at the source, it is automatically imported into Pure and linked
to the DOI of the imported record.

123. Advise on open access options and policies
When seeking advice on where to publish, librarians are often researchers’ first port ofcall. And when they want to publish open access, that advice can be particularly valuable
to navigate the many options on offer. Pure draws in data from Sherpa Romeo, an online
resource that aggregates and analyzes publisher copyright and open access archiving
policies. Sherpa Romeo generates summaries of these policies on a journal-by-journal
basis, which are then imported into Pure for librarians and researchers to view. It is also
possible to apply filters in Pure based on Sherpa Romeo policy recommendations, open
access restrictions and open access routes. In addition, Pure highlights whether journals
are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a trusted index of OA titles.
To keep researchers up-to-date on their own institution’s OA policies, Pure hascreated a dedicated section that administrators can use to communicate OA-related
recommendations ( for further details on this functionality see Appendix, Link 4).

Fig. 7
An administratorconfigured templatefor in-productmessaging featuring
institute-specific
OA policies andrecommendations, andlinks to resources.

This makes it easy for them to ensure that researchers receive the most relevant OA
references and guidelines at the right moment in their workflow. The section also
includes Sherpa Romeo recommendations.

Fig. 8An administratorenabled interactive
guide draws on Sherpa
Romeo data to help
users identify possible
OA routes, based on
specific journal andpublishing strategies.

Pure is also now largely compliant with Plan S institutional repository and publisher
requirements around accessibility, interoperability and quality of data, and is working toresolve the last few gaps.

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Use case 3

Increase the visibilityof researchers andtheir work

One of the key goals of open science is to promote theopen sharing of research. This involves not only ensuringthat potential readers can easily access content, but making
certain that content is discoverable. That means making surethat it is visible.
This concept doesn’t only apply to research, but toresearchers themselves. Another important aspect of open
science is collaboration. According to Science Europe:“Open Access and data re-use increase the circulation ofknowledge, spark innovation and foster collaboration on a
global scale.” 7 And that collaboration can take many forms,
from the open sharing of information between academics
and industry, to partnerships crossing country anddiscipline borders.

Monitoring andmanaging
research data

Open collaboration can be particularly
helpful for developing or less researchintensive economies, providing themwith access to much-needed funding,equipment or knowledge; an important
step toward creating a more equal andinclusive research landscape.
As a result, finding effective ways to raise the profile ofresearchers, their research and its impact has become
increasingly important for institutions. As has demonstrating topotential collaborators their commitment to open science.

Supporting andtracking open accesspublishing

Increasing thevisibility of
researchers andtheir work

Evaluating
progress towards
open science goals

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How Pure can help
The Pure portal provides a visually appealing way to showcase important elements of an
institution’s open science enterprise. In addition, content in the portal is openly accessible
and easy to find via online search engines. OA outputs in the portal are clearly identified
by an ‘open lock’ symbol and visitors can download OA articles directly from the portal.

Fig. 9The OA content
filters available on
the Pure portal.

When visitors select a research output, information on the access status of that output
is provided (see figure 10).

Fig. 10The Pure portal
provides informationon the OA status ofresearch outputs.

For documents and files that are still covered by an embargo, the embargo end date isgiven, along with a link to request a copy directly from the author (see figure 11).

Finally, ‘quick links’ in the Pure portal enable visitors to share outputs via channels suchas Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or email at the click of a button.

Fig. 11
The Pure portal
also provides
information on any
embargos associatedwith a research
output, and a link tocontact its author.

Fig. 12A blue ‘quick links’menu makes it easy
for visitors to shareresearch outputs.

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According to AESIS, the Network for Advancing & Evaluating theSocietal Impact of Science, one important aspect of open scienceis its ability to further the impact of science in our society 8. Thisrefers to the reach of research beyond academia; for example, its
positive effect on the economy, the environment or public policy.
But with societal impact notoriously difficult to measure,increasingly people are using contributions to the UN
Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) as a proxy indicator.
On the Pure portal, a graphic highlights an institution’scontribution to these 17 goals, with clickable options providing
information on the researchers, research outputs and projects
linked to each one. Pure can also show which SDG-related
publications are open access.

“Pure is a solution that extends beyond theorganization and accumulation of data. It has
played a vital role in identifying the value in our
institution’s research output and increasing ourinstitutional visibility.”– Michael Greil, Head of Research Information System,
University of Vienna, Austria, (taken from the case study
A researcher-centric approach to research reporting and evaluation)“We, at Lingnan, are fully aware of the impact of research on shaping of our future society. Societal impact can
only take place when people notice our researches. Lingnan Scholars is now the gateway, demonstrating to theworld our strength and achievements in research. With better visibility of our research endeavours, we believe it
could spearhead more knowledge exchange and collaboration from around the world.”– Prof. Joshua MOK Ka Ho, Vice-President, Lam Man Tsan Chair Professor of Comparative Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
(taken from the case study Unlocking Liberal Arts Research Potential With PURE)

Case study

Supporting collaboration and societal impact
When COVID-19 emerged, the Galveston
National Laboratory (GNL) in Texas,
USA, was among the first to respond. In
addition to being home to experts on thecoronaviruses MERS-CoV and SARS-COV(both close relatives of COVID-19), thelab’s researchers helped to set up China’s
maximum biosecurity lab in Wuhan –the same lab that identified the newcoronavirus strain.

Read the full case study

With the GNL researchers and medical
teams so active, the lab’s Research
Development Specialist Melodi Moore
needed a way to showcase their virus
expertise and key collaborations to
support a coordinated response to
the global threat.

Pure swiftly responded to thepandemic with the launch of a dedicated
COVID-19 banner, an optional featurethat institutions could display on the
homepage of their Pure portal. Clicking
on the banner led visitors to a landing
page, where, thanks to a powerful,easy-to-tweak and transparent searchstring, only virus-related information
was displayed. It ensured that relevant
researcher profiles and research on
COVID-related topics were easy to findand review. According to Melodi:“I don’t know what we would havedone without Pure during COVID-19.
We used it so much, from reporting on
our work to showcasing our experts.”

16

The Pure portal also supports collaboration by highlighting
an organization’s research networking capabilities. The
homepage features an interactive map, which shows, at a
glance, an institution’s partners, where they are based, and key
collaboration topics.
This is complemented by the portal’s profiles tab, whichshowcases the unique expertise of researchers in a searchfriendly form, making it easy for potential collaborators to findthem via Pure or online search engines, whatever their disciplineor location. Filters enable visitors to refine the list of researchers
by UN SDG contribution or area of expertise, while the portal’s
research output tab offers access to the institution’s researchcontent, with the option to filter on open access and UN SDGrelated publications.

“A Pure profile says a lot about a researcher andoffers a really effective and easy way to showcase
them and their work. I recommend they link totheir profile from their department webpage,in their email signature and in press releases– basically, anywhere they can place it wherecollaborators will link to it.”
– Melodi Moore, Research Development Specialist, Universityof Texas Medical Branch Research Administration(taken from the case study How UTMB leveraged Pure topromote and report on its COVID-19 response)

Together these portal elements can advance an institution’s
open science goals by boosting visibility of research expertise,researchers and impact to strategic partners, governments
and funders.
Pure’s API also boosts the discoverability of an institution’scontent. It works interoperably with a variety of other systems byproviding Pure data in a standard format that can be reused intheir feeds. This supports key open science goals around access,transparency and reproducibility.

Case study

Making local language content more accessible
The Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá,
Colombia, was eager to maximize thevisibility of its research capabilities andencourage international collaborations,especially in the social sciences
and humanities.

Read the full case study

To do that, it needed to showcase someof the great work done by those teams.
However, with much of it published in
Spanish in non-indexed journals, thatwasn’t going to be easy. The lack ofaccessibility to the university’s non-STEM
content was highlighted when Rosario’s
former Technology Officer, Carlos
Estévez-Bretón, was asked by a fellow
attendee at an international conference
about the accuracy of books and movies
on Colombia’s drugs trade. He knew thatat least 70 percent of what was written
and filmed was made up, but the
research that supported that statistic
was not available in English.
To increase accessibility anddiscoverability of the university’s nonSTEM findings, Estévez-Bretón andhis colleagues turned to Pure. Papers
are now translated and hosted on
their Pure portal, which has increased
visibility of the research in Google andother search engines, and opened theresults to readers worldwide. This has
not only raised the profile of researchthat can benefit other countries facing
similar issues, but is helping theuniversity to identify and attract
potential collaborators.

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Use case 4

Evaluate progress
towards open
science goals

While setting targets around open sciencedrives wider adoption, analyzing progress
towards those goals is just as vital.
For institutions, insights on open science
performance can help with internal
decisions around allocation of resources
and funding. They can also provide
valuable evidence of their open science
commitment and achievements topotential funders.
Increasingly, countries are relying onthese kinds of data to guide strategy
too. At least 14 to date have introduced
performance-based research funding
systems (PRFSs). These programs evaluate
the output and impact of research
performed at a national level and aim tounderstand its wider societal impact. Thisis then used to guide funding decisions.
For example, in the case of the UK’s
REF (Research Excellence Framework)
PRFS, the data is gathered for three key
purposes:• To inform allocation of the circa £2billion in public funding the four UK
higher education funding bodies invest
in research each year.9• To provide accountability for thatpublic investment and demonstrate thebenefits it has generated.10

The increasing pressure on many nations’
R&D funding sources, and the growing
maturity of existing PRFSs, has led
some to predict a rise in the number ofcountries adopting these programs.
With their ability to integrate and linkresearch elements and processes in acentral location, RIMS are perfectly placed
to provide the kind of evidence-based
data that power effective reporting at
every level.

• To provide benchmarking informationand establish reputationalyardsticks with peer institutions anddepartments.10

Monitoring andmanaging
research data

Supporting andtracking open accesspublishing

Increasing thevisibility of
researchers andtheir work

Evaluating
progress towards
open science goals

18

How Pure can help
As we’ve seen in previous sections, Pure is home to rich and connected data on an
institution’s research outputs, researchers and impact. And with its comprehensive
reporting functionality, Pure can turn that data into valuable insights on an institution’s
open science activities, from research data sharing and open access publishing toopen collaboration.

RIMS

Centralized data
• Accurate & comprehensive• Efficient & effective workflows

Alongside the integrations we’ve already discussed, Pure draws
on patent data from LexisNexis PatentSight and media mentions
from Newsflo. Used with the PlumX Metrics and data on the UN
SDGs that Pure offers, these help to build a compelling pictureof an institution’s wider societal impact.
In the case of PRFSs, Pure delivers the breadth of data thatthese programs typically require. For example, the UK’s
REF assesses three distinct elements for each participating
institution: “the quality of outputs (e.g., publications,performances, and exhibitions), their impact beyond
academia, and the environment that supports research.”10
REF 2021 also requires that journal articles and conference
proceedings based on research the program has funded
are deposited in an openly available repository within threemonths of the paper being accepted.

Better strategic decisions• Comprehensive visibility

Better performance• Increased funding• Expanded collaboration• Ehanced reputation“At our university, we have a few Environmental
Science departments, but the faculty members
are quite diverse. If we really want to focus on
Environmental Sciences, we can use the Pure
UN SDG information to identify leading scientists
in the field, and then group them together in a
virtual unit….The same Pure features could be used
to guide the composition of undergraduate andgraduate classes.”– Prof. Yong Sik Ok, Professor and Global Research Director at
Korea University, Korea (taken from the case study
Why Pure has become the go-to solution for one of Korea’s mostinfluential researchers)

Pure provides a large proportion of these data for theassessment phase of REF 2021.
Pure also has direct links to the official REF portal,
enabling library and/or research teams to automate thesubmission process.
And to support compliance with the REF requirements
around sharing of research, the Pure development team has
designed functionality that helps institution administrators
identify content missing full text information, and flag when
the three-month deadline is approaching ( for further details on
this functionality see Appendix, Link 5).

“Pure really helped us to solve a number ofdifferent business issues that we had and one of thethings that it helps us with the most is managing
our REF submission, which is really important to us
in the UK at the moment. It also is a system thatallows us to have a very high quality of data.”– Laura Turner, Research Systems Project Officer,
The University of Manchester, UK

19

Conclusion
Open science will continue to grow in uptake and importance.
For institutional research offices and libraries this will meanchange, not only in terms of workflows but in how weunderstand the impact of research. As we’ve discussed in thiswhite paper, RIMS can support that change in a wide variety ofways, from increasing the efficiency of reporting and compliance
to raising the visibility of researchers, their work and yourinstitution’s reputation.
At Elsevier, ensuring that Pure not only meets, but anticipates
the open science needs of the community is a key pillar ofour development work. The Pure team are active participantsin major initiatives euroCRIS, OpenAIRE, DataCite, ORCID,
EARMA and INORMS, and we are well versed in transformative
agreements and national initiatives. We will continue to draw onthese relationships and knowledge to ensure that our plans anddevelopment strategies align with Plan S and other open
science initiatives.

20

References
1.

Research futures: Drivers and scenarios for the next decade. Elsevier. February 2019.
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-research-futures-report.

2.

European Data Portal. 02 June 2020. https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/news/rise-ai-and-open-data

3.

OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2021: Times of Crisis and Opportunity, OECD Publishing. 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1787/75f79015-en

4.

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies. The US Office of Science and Technology
Policy. 25 August 2022. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-AccessMemo.pdf

5.

Bryant, R. et al. 2017. Research Information Management: Defining RIM and the Library’s Role. Dublin, OH: OCLC
Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/C3NK88

6.

Else, H. How a torrent of COVID science changed research publishing — in seven charts. Nature. 16 December
2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03564-y

7.

Position Statement: The Framework Programme that Europe Needs. Science Europe. October 2016. https://www.
scienceeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/SE_Position_Statement_H2020.pdf

8.

AESIS website. Accessed 04 August 2022. https://aesisnet.com/

9.

PDF: REF 2021 – Key Facts. Accessed 17 October 2022. https://www.ref.ac.uk/media/1848/ref2021_key_facts.pdf

10. REF website About page. Accessed 08 August 2022. https://www.ref.ac.uk/about-the-ref/what-is-the-ref/Appendix: Links to Pure documents
The following links are hosted in a web environment developed for Pure customers. If you have yet to join the Purecommunity, but would like to learn more about one of these topics, please don’t hesitate to contact the Pure team.
Link 1: Open Data and Pure https://doc.pure.elsevier.com/display/PureClient/Open+Data+and+Pure
Link 2: OA Relevant Import Sources https://doc.pure.elsevier.com/display/PureClient/OA-Relevant+Import+Sources
Link 3: Open Access Overview Screen, Filters and Tasks https://doc.pure.elsevier.com/display/PureClient/
Open+Access+overview+screen%2C+filters+and+tasks
Link 4: Open Access Guidance Section https://doc.pure.elsevier.com/display/PureClient/Open+Access+guidance+section
Link 5: Open Access Compliance https://doc.pure.elsevier.com/display/PUREUK/Open+Access+compliance21

The world’s leading research information management system that enables evidence-based
decisions, simplifies research administration and optimizes impact, reporting, and compliance.

Data Monitor puts institutions in the driving seat of their Research Data Management journeyby providing visibility on their institution’s entire research data output.

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the FAIR principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability.

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