The University of California awards contract to Symplectic for the implementation of a publication harvesting system to support UC’s Open Access Policy

The California Digital Library (CDL), in conjunction with University of California campus partners, has chosen Symplectic as the vendor to implement a publication harvesting system in support of the UC Open Access Policy, passed by the Academic Senate in July 2013.

Symplectic’s flagship product, Elements, will form the basis of a research information management system intended to simplify participation in UC’s OA Policy by providing an efficient method for faculty to deposit their research into eScholarship, UC’s institutional repository. This system holds great promise for dramatically increasing the rate of deposit of faculty publications in accordance with the policy.

With a robust set of features that address the specific requirements of the UC OA Policy and the needs of UC authors, Elements will closely monitor publication sources, including public and licensed publication indexes, for any new materials published by UC authors. Once a new publication is detected in the indexes, the system will collect as much information about that publication as possible and contact the author(s) by email for confirmation and manuscript upload. Author-approved publications will then be automatically submitted to eScholarship, where they will be openly available to the public.

Symplectic, a UK-based developer of integrated research information management systems, was chosen after an exhaustive RFP process, conducted by members of the CDL team and representatives from the three pilot campuses: UC Irvine, UCLA, and UCSF.  The publication harvesting system will launch in June 2014, and will serve the three pilot campuses. Contingent on funding and review by the Academic Senate, the system will be extended in June 2015 to cover the remaining UC campuses.

Further developments in the implementation of this harvesting system can be tracked by visiting the Open Access Policy Implementation (OAPI) wiki or subscribing to the OAPI mailing list.

To learn more about the UC Open Access Policy or to contact us with questions, visit the Office of Scholarly Communication site.