The Crick Institute are on a Pathway to Open Research

We’re excited to announce that The Francis Crick Institute have partnered with our portfolio companies Symplectic and Figshare to enable richer profiles for their researchers and to make it easier for them to publish their papers and data Open Access.

The Crick can now: 

• Monitor their publications better
• Capture manuscripts earlier to add acknowledgments of grants and all Crick staff contributions
• Get a repository that handles both papers and data for open research

The Crick shared their reasons for selecting Symplectic Elements and Figshare. 

“We wanted to ensure that we were addressing the needs and expectations of a bigger and more complex institute. We also wanted to make sure that we were maximising the opportunities to make our research open.”  Frank Norman, Head of Library & Information Services (LIS) 

When deciding on a system to meet their needs, the selection team at the Crick Institute were focused on using technology to empower its researchers to have richer research profiles and to make it easier for them to publish their papers and data Open Access.

“We wanted to offer self-service profile generation so the researchers could easily go in and update their own profiles and publications.”

They were also in need of a proven system – which Elements was able to provide. 

“Symplectic Elements is a mature product and two of our partner universities are using it. Coming to our first CRIS project we wanted to be sure that the people helping us to install the system really knew what they were doing.”

As one of the first organisations in the UK to launch Figshare as an all-in-one institutional repository – supporting publications and research data – the Crick Institute is enabling its researchers to store and share their outputs with the wider community.

“We like that Figshare can handle multiple types of material. We also felt we were breaking ground by being one of the first institutions in the UK to adopt Figshare as a publications repository.”
Patti Biggs, Information Services Specialist in the LIS team