The Research Information Management Service is a collection of online tools that helps researchers at the University to record and review research activity held in personal user accounts stored in a secure central server. Researchers commonly use Symplectic Elements (SE) to record outputs, grants, professional activities, and deposit full text outputs to the University’s repository, the Oxford Research Archive (ORA). It is specifically designed to provide consistent information regarding research outputs (journal articles, book chapters, research data, etc.) and is the University’s principal tool for preparing its submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Citations of individual outputs are available within SE, while an indicator of the online attention received by outputs are tracked by Altmetric.

If it is suitably configured SE will feed research information to other University systems including public-facing profiles on departmental websites and publications data to a researcher’s ORCiD profile. The service also populates researcher profiles for the internal search and discovery tool - Research@Oxford. SE also facilitates recording the impact of research by helping staff collect, collate, and report on the evidence of how their research effects the economy, society, culture, public policy, health, the environment or quality of life beyond academia.