This page provides a brief orientation for Faculty of Medicine staff on Professional Web Pages (PWPs), the Symplectic Elements system and the Spiral institutional repository.  These systems work together to support individual academics and research staff in recording, reporting and showcasing their academic activities and outputs.   Please read through the information below to get an overview of these systems, and what they can do for you.  If you are new to the College you can then get started on setting yourself up.


Why bother?

1. It's easy and instant

You can log straight into your PWP editing page1 and your Symplectic Elements2 account from any pc or laptop, and keep your information up to date at a time that’s convenient for you.  Data refreshes from Symplectic Elements to your PWP on a weekly basis, but if you are in a hurry you can hit the ‘refresh’ button in your PWP and pull  new records in instantly. 

You can learn how to edit your PWP and Symplectic Elements profile quickly with written guides and online tutorials. - there is no need to take time out to attend a course.

1 To find your PWP, see Professional Web Pages (PWPs)
2 To find your Symplectic Elements Account, go to the Symplectic Elements guide.

2. It's supported and free to use

These systems are provided for your use by College, at no additional cost to you or your department.
 
The systems are very easy to learn and use.  However if you do get stuck, support is available to help you.  Your Web support team will be able to work with you to help you to get the best from your PWP and your Symplectic profile.  To get help you can contact your Faculty Web Officer.  
 
There is also specialist support available to you to help with using Symplectic to deposit papers into the Spiral Institutional Repository, or to apply for Article Processing Charges (APCs).  This support is provided by a team of library professionals who can help you ensure you are completing these important tasks correctly.  To get help with using Spiral, look at the help guides on the Open Access website.

3. It's integrated and compliant

The data you record in Symplectic doesn't just populate your PWP.
 
Within Imperial College, it can 
  • provide content for automated people and publication lists  which can be added to other College websites, including research group websites.
  • provide the foundation of datasets for major College-wide programmes of work such as preparation for the next Research Excellence Framework.
  • connect you to expertise in the Open Access Team for individual help when you are depositing your publications in Spiral
  • allow you to apply for financial support for Article Processing Charges (APCs).
Externally, it can also
  • integrate with ORCID.   ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-based effort to provide a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. Since August 2015, you need to have an ORCID iD for grant applications to the Wellcome Trust and in September 2015 NIHR began rolling out the requirement for lead applicants to provide their iD when submitting new funding applications.  If you already have an ORCID id, you can link it to Symplectic straight away - if you don't have one you can generate an ID through Symplectic and link it (see Create an ORCID iD and connect to Symplectic).  Once you have added your ORCID iD, Symplectic can read your ORCID record and add publications that you claimed there to your Symplectic profile during regular trawling of data sources.  If you leave Imperial, your ORCID iD goes with you; it is not tied to a particular institution.
  • support some features which make it easier for you to update your Researchfish records. A simple guide is available which explains how publication information can be exported from Symplectic Elements and uploaded in Researchfish (see Add publications to Researchfish using Symplectic).  
    Note - Imperial is also currently piloting a central transfer of publication data from Symplectic to Researchfish.   Please see the Researchfish Interoperability page on the Research Office website for more details. 

4. It saves you time

The College recognises that it takes you considerable time and effort to keep professional information up to date and to stay on top of Open Access and research funder reporting requirements.  To reduce the burden, and maximise the value of this necessary work, the College is continually working to improve the interoperability of your Symplectic, PWP and Spiral profile with key College and external systems. 

The more regularly you update these three key systems with your work, the less likely it is you will have to

  • maintain multiple sources of info about what you do
  • duplicate lists of activities and outputs
  • provide responses to ad hoc requests for data
  • deal with last minute problems around non-compliance with a critical funder OA rule.

Get in the habit of keeping these systems up to date, and they will support and showcase your activity during your time at Imperial.  

The systems