Today, 19 universities in the UK use Pure.
We first had contact with UK institutions in 2007. We were present in 3 or 4 countries at the time, but we had little knowledge about research affairs in the UK and consequently began learning about institutions, the British HE-sector's various authorities, statutory returns, and other areas. Actual work on Pure's UK datamodel began in 2009.
From the outset, we wanted the UK datamodel to be CERIF-based as our other national datamodels at the time, and we also wanted it to incorporate all relevant UK concept. That would be content types specific for RAE and REF but also content types for purposes other than statutory returns.
Pure itself also needed work done. We wanted it to fit with British research administration and management practises; how content is registered and validated, how reports are made, how statistics are calculated, and so on. We knew that existing institutional business processes had to be supported, and to make Pure do that, we needed to understand research administration and management at UK HEIs. We remain indebted to our UK customers for their effort and patience; the early ones in particular. It is thanks to their collaboration with our system designers that we were able to mix past experience and existing strong sides of Pure with UK-specific requirements in a sufficiently generic way. We are still doing that, now in close collaboration with the UK User Group's member institutions.
The following 19 UK institutions has purchased Pure (Chronological order, newest on top):
UNIVERSITIES | COUNTRY | PRODUCTS |
University of Birmingham | England | Pure + SPP |
University of Bristol | England | Pure + APP |
Queen's University Belfast | N. Ireland | Pure + SPP |
University of Bath | England | Pure + SPP |
University of the Highlands and Islands | Scotland | Pure + APP |
The University of Edinburgh | Scotland | Pure |
King’s College London | England | Pure + APP |
Glasgow Caledonian University | Scotland | Pure + SPP |
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh | Scotland | Pure |
University of Dundee | Scotland | Pure + APP |
Institute of Education, London | England | Pure + APP |
Aston University | England | Pure + APP |
Lancaster University | England | Pure + APP |
University of Hertfordshire | England | Pure |
University of Strathclyde | Scotland | Pure |
Royal Holloway | England | Pure + APP |
University of York | England | Pure + APP |
University of Aberdeen | Scotland | Pure + APP |
University of St Andrews | Scotland | Pure + APP |
SPP = Standard PurePortal, APP = Advanced PurePortal
Totally in the UK, Pure has been licensed to 11,463 research-active academic staff. The total number of users is higher than that though, because other types of staff also use the system; e.g. research support offices, libraries, managers, and so on.
Pure's UK datamodel is based on CERIF, which ensures availability of content types, relations, and other concepts as prescribed by CERIF. Further, Pure's UK datamodel incorporates certain UK-specific concepts that are not currently adopted by CERIF as standard. Impact is an example.
It is expected that CERIF will adopt Impact and other UK-specific content types. The board of euroCRIS has clearly signalled that a broad, generic CERIF model is preferred to national or regional variations, that may be more or less sanctioned.
Our recommendation to the Pure User Groups in different countries is to follow CERIF as it evolves - while certain local concepts may be added to Pure's UK datamodel for good reasons and purpose, such concept should be considered interim and replaced by the equivalent, "proper" CERIF concepts once they are announced - at least in so far that new CERIF concepts are usable as replacement for local concepts. We give euroCRIS's CERIF Task Group detailed feedback about local concepts and how they are implemented in Pure, for the group to use that information in its work with updates of the CERIF model.
Today, Pure's standardised UK datamodel is used by all UK institutions. While this is a testimony to the models current maturity and flexibility, it is important to emphasise that it is still being developed - not just the CRIS system but also its datamodel must continually respond to new needs and requirements as they emerge from the surrounding environment.
Pure's REF2014 module was formally released with version 4.9.0 on April 4th, 2011, but it had been running at several institutions before that, subject to collaborative development and evaluation. The module was also a frequent guest at the UK User Group meetings before its release in April. For more information about the module, please also see the separate article on REF.
Pure supports the import and storage of certain RAE 2008 information. It allows statistical and analytical reporting to compare the 2008 return with present-day data. It is for example common that Pure-owners store information about what UoA staff-members were assigned to in 2008.
Pure will be able to support returns to RCUK's ROP project in due time. As per August 2011, details about data formats, protocols, and interfaces was not yet made available in final form. Similar to this, it is being investigated how Pure may support direct submission through JeS. The UK Pure User Group has contacted RCUK for technical details and consultation, and this is currently in progress.
The biannual HESA return cannot be made in full by Pure as it requires information about undergraduate, a type of content that Pure does not deal with, it being a Research management system. It is however likely that Pure will be able to help out with large parts of the HESA return, something that is to be decided and formalised at a later point in collaboration with the UK User Group.
We are currently investigating options for providing system support for the OAI return (Other Activity Indicators) to the SFC in Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council concerning the return of information about postgraduate students, research assistants, and Research income.
We are investigating similar options to let Pure assist in the HEBCIS return (Higher Education Business and Community Interactions Survey), the annual report to HEFCE on research and enterprise activity not funded by HEFCE that summarises annual interaction in certain categories, aiming to measures the demand for institutions' expertise through the price paid to them by funding bodies, government departments, and private and public sector clients.
The UK User Group is forum for collaboration on functional features, the UK datamodel, and Pure's REF-specific features and concepts. The group's members also share costs where possible, and it occasionally plans events of common interest.
The group defines its own rules and is currently chaired by Anna Clements, akc@st-andrews.ac.uk. Membership is voluntary and currently free of charge, but the group has decided that institutions must have signed with us prior to becoming a member and participating in meetings. The user group is independent of Atira, but Atira staff members participate in meetings regularly. The group currently convenes quarterly, member institutions take turns hosting the meetings.
Atira became a member of ARMA in 2010. We follow the news bulletins and we hope to be able to exhibit at the annual ARMA conferences.
Atira has participated as partner in the following JISC projects:
JISC PROJECT TITLE | DESCRIPTION |
Creation of valid CERIF-XML from rich, inter-related data from different heterogeneous sources through a process of homogenisation. Two Pure instances took part in the project by delivering data to this project.
The scope of the project also includes aggregation of the CERIF-XML in a CRIS and use of that CRIS in a real-world HEI-community. | |
Encoding systematic and structured information on research impact in the context of the CERIF-XML schema.
Production of a comprehensive set of indicators to be mapped both to the CERIF standard and the CERIF4REF schema created by the previous Readiness for REF (R4R) project. | |
Defining a standard CERIF-XML schema for the major UK data exchange projects within the sector: "The objective is to take this agreed model through to production ready interfaces for [...] main commercial CRIS systems [...] in the UK to demonstrate the use of CERIF-XML in live scenarios [...]."
Atira's role is to deliver the proof of concept related to Pure by implementation of a standardised import- and export component similar to Pure's existing PXA import/export facility (Pure's XML Archive format) but with the important difference, that the format will be CERIF-XML. |
JISC projects with Atira participation
We formally collaborate with UNIT4 in the UK, out of their Swansea office. The purpose of the collaboration is to develop standardised interfaces between UNIT4 systems and the Atira Pure system. Agresso Award Management (AAM), Agresso Business World (ABW), and Agresso CRM1 are the first 3 systems to come out of the box with an interface for integration with Pure.
We also have a collaboration contract with Thomson-Reuters, a partnership focused on increasing the level service of service and support for TR/Atira customers using Pure and TR products like Web of Knowledge (WoK) including Web of Science (WoS), and InCites. One result of this collaboration is the opportunity for Pure-owners to import and synchronise the TR dataset underlying InCites.
Finally, we work with Elsevier to develop new integrations and services related to their products and services; ScoPus and SciVal most prominently.
Atira A/S
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Phone: (+45) 96 35 61 00
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General info: info@atira.dk
PURE support: pure-support@atira.dk
Our technical area is server-side application architecture, development, and implementation. Our business domain is Research Information Management. We supply our product Pure, an enterprise-class CERIF-based CRIS system.
Pure, released in 2003, is licensed for 47,900 research staff at our 75 references in 8 countries.
Copyright © 2012 Atira A/S, a Reed Elsevier Company. All rights reserved.
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