Spiral is Imperial’s open access research repository with over 80,000 items. It runs on open-source software called DSpace.
Spiral is freely available to the public, and uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) which facilitates indexing by Google Scholar and open access content aggregators such as Core, Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), OpenAIRE, the British Library’s doctoral theses EThOS service and many others.
Symplectic Elements is Imperial’s Current Research Information System which researchers use to maintain their research profiles such as grants and publications. It is not a full-text repository.
Imperial researchers depositing their work in Spiral will use Symplectic. The Library Services Open Access team will process their manuscript before it is made live in Spiral. Researchers who wish to publish gold open access and pay for Article Processing Charges (APC) can also do this through Symplectic.
Researchers also maintain a list of their research publications via Symplectic. This is displayed on their Professional Web Pages (PWP). To make changes to records in Spiral, researchers will first need to update the Symplectic record then request an update to the same record in Spiral by emailing openaccess@imperial.ac.uk.
The “MySpiral” button within Spiral is for administrators only and doctoral students who upload their theses.