Pure Upgrade Facilitates Research Excellence Framework 2021 Submission

The recent upgrade to Pure completes a four year plan to ensure the University is able to make its submission via the application to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.

Pure, the University’s Current Research Information System (CRIS), is updated every four months to ensure the University is able to take full advantage of the functionality to support key University business processes around access to and management of the institution’s world leading research. The software supports discovery of the University’s research via the recently updated Edinburgh Research Explorer, submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), open access requirements and legislative changes (GDPR) and demands from those funding research as well as University researchers.

The recent upgrade of Pure software version to v5.19.3-2 is the culmination of a plan which has run for four years to continuously upgrade the service to enable the University to make its REF submission in 2021. The REF is a national assessment of research taking place at UK higher education institutions. It takes place approximately every seven  years, the last one being REF 2014.

Each Pure upgrade project relies on collaboration within the Information Services Applications, Development, Production and Project Management teams who work with the service owners, Research Information Systems in Library and University Collections. This collaboration has resulted in over 20 upgrades in the past four years.