Symplectic is the front-end system used to deposit articles into ORA and organise them in preparation for the next REF.

Configuring your Symplectic account

Log on to Symplectic  using your usual SSO.

On the Menu tab, click on Account --> Data Source Search --> Automatic claiming

In the list of Data Sources, ensure that ORCID, Scopus, Web of Science and maybe PubMed are checked, and NOT arXiv (due to problems with the integration between arXiv and Symplectic).

If you have them, add your Scopus and ORCID account details -- it is definitely worth getting an ORCID account. 

Next, on the Menu tab click on My Account --> Profile --> Edit profile, and enter your details there.

Issues with Symplectic

Symplectic is still under development, and does not yet work perfectly.  In particular, there are two known issues, both often related to Symplectic's automated harvesting of arXiv papers.

1) Sometimes you end up with two different records in Symplectic for the same paper.  When this happens, you should merge the two publications together by following the documentation here.

2) There is an issue when doing Deposit on Acceptance for papers which have previously appeared as arXiv articles under the same title. On the first page you are asked to enter the title to search for an existing match within the Symplectic system.  The purpose of this is to save you effort if a co-author has already deposited the paper, but it causes problems if it matches to an earlier arXiv pre-print. In this case, the best thing is to use the Skip option on the first page to avoid the match, and then enter the details as usual to create a second record. If you can, you should then delete the original arXiv record to avoid any further problems.

It is because of both of these problems that we advise not using arXiv as a Data Source -- Symplectic is really just for papers which have been accepted for journal/conference publication.

Symplectic FAQs and User Guides

The university provides a FAQ webpage here. In particular this includes help on:

1) I have Acted on Acceptance but recent articles are not appearing at the top of my list

2) How do I add a Date of Acceptance (DOA) to an already 'claimed' publication record?

The university also provides a number of helpful user guides here.

Symplectic accounts

Please note: Symplectic accounts are generated automatically for departmental research staff and academic staff.  College staff and graduate students will need to request for an account to be generated by completing the form at https://researchsupport.admin.ox.ac.uk/reporting/symplectic/register#collapse398751 and emailing it to @email

 

Please report any problems to the UAS Symplectic Elements helpdesk: symplectic@admin.ox.ac.uk

 

Please contact us with feedback and comments about this page. Last updated on 23 May 2023 17:10.