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Registration for the Symplectic UK User Conference is Now Open #SymUCUK15

8th May 2015
 | Katy Alexander

In just over a month’s time, the Symplectic UK User Conference will be held at their HQ campus in London. For two days, they have a breadth of fascinating talks lined up, alongside many interactive workshops for attendees to share their thoughts and ideas.

Date: June 11th – 12th, 2015
Location: The Stables, 2 Trematon Walk, London N1 9FN
Time: 9:30am to 4:00pm

Registration is free, but places are limited. Delegates are welcome to attend either one of the days, or both. Further details on the content of each day can be found below.

Agenda:

Day 1: Thursday 11th June

Theme: Open Access, Impact and the next REF

09.30

Registration and Coffee

10.00

Welcome

10.15

Company update

Jonathan Breeze, CEO, Symplectic

11.00

REF impact – case study content, analysis and implications

Jonathan Adams, Chief Scientist, Digital Science

Processing 6,500 case study documents has produced a database that offers both great evidence of, and insights about, the UK research base. The process of setting up the database will be discussed, pointing to management issues for future REF cycles. Concepts around ‘evidence’ for academic and socio-economic impact will be highlighted by reference to the associated metadata. Some preliminary analysis will be reviewed as well as new analysis looking over 25 years of research assessment.

11.40

Open Data in the Age of Impact

Daniel Hook, Director of Research Metrics, Digital Science

The Impact agenda has now been with us for at least 4 years, most recently being used as a means to evaluate research quality in REF 2014. However, REF did not significantly take account of the movement around open data and although HEFCE and research council approaches to open access are becoming clear, there are natural tensions between open data, collaboration and research evaluation as it is currently imagined. We will discuss some of the challenges emerging in the open data and open access spaces.

12.15

Lunch

13.30

Roadmap Update: Impact

Tom Letcher, VP Business Development, Symplectic & Laura Fedorciow, Co-Founder, Vertigo Ventures

A session to discuss how Symplectic, and our partners at Vertigo Ventures, can help institutions address their requirements in the impact space. We will set out our plans for introducing an impact module into Elements, outlining planned functionality and explaining why we’ve taken the approach we have, then move on to exploring planned interop between Elements and Vertigo Ventures’ product Impact-Tracker, and finally explain how the two solutions differ, and what use cases each will support.

14.15

Workshop sessions:

The OA session will run twice allowing all delegates to attend:

Open access and Repository Tools

During this workshop, members of the Symplectic team will explain how more recent versions of Elements can be configured to further support institutional and funder open access policies. The session will also explain how subscribers of Symplectic’s new Open Access Monitor will be able to track compliance levels with HEFCE’s policy for open access in the post-2014 REF.

There should also be time to discuss planned/desired enhancements to Symplectic’s existing repository connector.

Due to room capacity constraints delegates will need to indicate which of the two workshops below they would like to attend in addition to the OA workshop:

a ) Configuring Institutional reporting

During this workshop, participants will learn how to register ‘institutional defined’ report templates via the Elements user interface and discover how this functionality is being used by Symplectic clients to support individual CV generation and group-based research activity reporting.

b ) Getting grant data into Elements

It’s been awhile since Elements was ‘just’ about Publication data. This is reflected in how it is used by our institutional clients across the globe. One increasingly important use case is the ability to link publication data to grant data inside Elements. In this session, members of the Symplectic team will explain the steps institutions need to undertake in order to import/feed grant data to Elements and then go on to explain how imported grant data can be used to generate the data required for systems such as ResearchFish.

15.15

Workshop repeat as above

16.15

End of Day 1

Day 2: Friday 12th June

Theme: Doing more with Elements: optimising institutional insight through system integrations

09.30

Registration and coffee

10.00

Welcome

Jonathan Breeze, CEO, Symplectic

10.15

Case Study: Dimensions for Universities

Giles Radford, Head of Professional Services, ŰberResearch

Juergen Wastl, Head of Research Information, University of Cambridge

Introduced in 2014, Dimensions for Universities is increasingly being used by research intensive universities to understand both current and future trends in research funding.

During this talk, Juergen and Giles will explain the motivations for adopting Dimensions for Universities at the University of Cambridge and explore some of the key questions the system is starting to help address.

11.00

Client led session

Details to be confirmed

11.30

Elements Analytics and Dashboards

Jonathan Miller, Senior Technical Consultant, Symplectic

An introduction to the new Elements Analytics module including the ability to design, register, and share interactive dashboards that enable exploration of the rich data that can be captured inside Elements.

12.15

Lunch

13.45

Altmetric for Institutions

Kathy Christian, COO, Altmetric

Abstract to follow

14.15

Branding: The Symplectic Journey

Sabih Ali, Head of Brand, Symplectic

As Head of Brand, Sabih spends most of his time thinking about how Symplectic and its products are perceived by both the public and its clients. The company’s website and other public-facing materials play a major part in telling our story. In this session, Sabih will reflect on the Symplectic brand over the past 3 years, showcase some examples of planned materials, and ask the audience for their thoughts on how Symplectic’s communication team can better serve the needs of its client-base.

14.45

Workshop sessions:

Due to room capacity constraints delegates will need to indicate which one of the following workshop sessions they would like to attend:

a ) System Administrators ‘Surgery’

The most powerful role in Elements can do it all! Attendees of this session will learn best practices in the System Administration domain.

For this session, we’d love it if you could bring along your biggest ‘pain points’, so that we can either provide an immediate remedy or identify a future change in prescription!

b ) Google Analytics

During this session we’ll explain how easy it is to make Google Analytics work with Elements, from setup to automated reporting. We will also share some dashboards we’ve created to help institutional clients answer questions such as “where are my users”, “what are they doing”, “how many users are still on IE4 (or Netscape)”, “and then elicit further feedback from the group.

c ) Open Research Network Tools

In 2014 Symplectic became Registered Service Providers for not one but two open research network platforms: VIVO and Profiles RNS. Both allow research institutions to showcase researcher interests, activities and accomplishments via a public interface.

This presentation will reflect on Symplectic’s first year as a Registered Service Provider, showcasing some of the projects we have supported, working with Elements and non-Elements clients.

15.45

Close

It’s going to be a busy couple of days, and we’re sure every attendee will be able to take away valuable knowledge.

Let team Symplectic know what you think of the conference by tweeting @Symplectic, with the hashtag #SymUCUK15.

REGISTRATION NOW CLOSED