Postgraduate research students

Requesting a public profile

All postgraduate research students are automatically given a Pure profile, but by default this profile is not publicly viewable on Edinburgh Research Explorer. You can request your profile be made public by using the online request form below. Once completed the form will be sent to your School/Deanery/Centre who will make your profile public and will be in touch with more information. 

Please note that you do not need to request a Pure public profile if you are using Pure to submit your student thesis. 

There are a number of policies and codes of conduct that you will need to read and agree to before you will be given a public profile. Take the time to read through these before submitting the request form. 

Code of Practice for Supervisors and Research Students

Code of Student Conduct 

University Computing Acceptable Use Policy

Research Publications & Copyright Policy (2021)

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Request form for Pure Profile to be made publicly available

If you have had no response within 2 weeks of submitting your request please contact the Research Information Systems team at pure@ed.ac.uk.

If you would like your profile to no longer be publicly available, please contact the Research Information Systems team at pure@ed.ac.uk.

Use the Edit Profile - Personal identification guide to learn how to update your profile photograph and other personal identification information. 

Photographs are displayed prominently in the new Edinburgh Research Explorer. If a photograph is not uploaded to Pure, this space will be filled with a grey outline. 

A short video has been created demonstrating how to add a profile photograph and update personal identification. Click on the ≡ in the top left hand corner of the video to skip to different sections. 

 Other useful guides for updating your profile: 

Pure - Edit profile - Education and Qualification (251.71 KB PDF)

Pure - Edit profile - External positions (187.94 KB PDF)

Pure - Edit Profile - Available PhD Projects (175.24 KB PDF)

You can add a variety of content to your research profile on Pure, including: 

• Research outputs, such as journal articles, books and book chapters, reports, working papers, contributions to conferences, etc. 

• Details of research-related activities, such as editorial work, participation in or organising events, talks or presentations, consultancy work, memberships, etc. 

• Prizes and awards you have received for your work as a researcher 

• Your Doctoral/Master’s Thesis 

While you cannot add the following content, you may request to be added to an existing record or for a record to be created by contacting your local Pure administrator: 

• Press/Media items 

• Projects you are involved in 

• Details of any published datasets 

• Any kind of impact (these records are only viewable by the creator and linked individuals, and are not published on Edinburgh Research Explorer (ERE) 

From peer-reviewed papers to book chapters, monographs, conference proceedings and practice-based outputs. 

• There are three ways to add your research outputs to Pure. This section refers to creating records from the pre-built templates that are available in Pure. 

• You can also import your research outputs from an online source or using a BibTeX or RIS file.

• There are a variety of research outputs and Pure has 47 sub-type templates that can be used. The most common types are listed in the table at the bottom of this section. Please refer to the guide for each type when adding research output records. 

• A short video has been created demonstrating how to add a publication using the Contribution to Journal > Article template. The principles in this video apply to all the other research output templates. Click on the ≡ icon in the top left hand corner of the video to skip to different sections. 

If you are not sure which template to use, please ask your local Pure contact for guidance. They will also be able to advise you on Open Access and/or REF-related requirements.

Please note that the research output records that you add will be validated by your College or School research administrator. Only validated research output records will be displayed on Edinburgh Research Explorer (ERE). 

The University of Edinburgh is committed to disseminating its research and scholarship as widely as possible. One of the ways to do this is to make research outputs and datasets available Open Access on the Edinburgh Research Explorer. This is supported by the University’s Copyright and Publications Policy, which applies to all staff involved in research. Postgraduate research students can opt in to the policy – you can do this when completing the request form to make your Pure profile publicly available. 

Please read through the Open Access guide to get more information about Gold and Green Open Access, funder policies and the University’s Copyright and Publications Policy.

If your research output/activity involved other people from the University of Edinburgh, then it might be the case that it has already been added to Pure. If this is the case, then you can request to be affiliated to the relevant record instead of creating a new one. The following guide will show you how to do this. 

Pure - Claim content (236.07 KB PDF)

Research outputs wrongly assigned to you, or record created with the wrong sub-type 

Among your research outputs in Pure you may find some that list you as an author but have not in fact been authored by you. This is a common error that happens when another user is importing their publications from an external source and does not rigorously check that all co-authors are recorded with correct affiliations. Consequently, if you share a surname with another author, you will be listed instead of them even if your given names are different. 

If you come across records incorrectly assigned to you, please contact the Research Information Systems team at pure@ed.ac.uk giving the details of the output and the nature of change required.

Occasionally, you might find that research output records have been created with an incorrect sub-type. For example 'Contribution to article>Article' rather than 'Contribution to article>Editorial'. If you think any of your research outputs have the incorrect sub-type, please contact your Local Pure contact giving the details of the output and the nature of the change required. 

Co-authored outputs 

If an output has more than one UoE author, always check to see if a record has already been created in Pure for it. If it has not, a Pure record needs to be created for that output. It is the responsibility of an UoE staff author to either create the Pure record or ensure the local Pure contact has the relevant document (Authors Accepted Manuscript (AAM) and acceptance email from publisher) to create the Pure record for them. However, if you do have access to the AAM and the acceptance email from the publisher please email on to the local Pure contact. 

Record activities related to your research, including editorial work, participating in conferences, and membership of committees or networks 

Use the Activities module in Pure to record the activities related to your research. Pure includes a wide-ranging selection of Activity templates that you can use to describe your research activities. 

Some examples of Activities and how to record them on Pure.

A short video has been created demonstrating how to add a research activity record for an oral presentation at a conference. The principles in this video apply to all the other Activity templates. Click on the ≡ icon in the top left hand corner of the video to skip to different sections. 

Use the guides below to add the different types of Activities: 

Pure - Add Activity - Publication peer-review and Editorial work (260.6 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Participating in or Organising an Event (347.46 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Talk or Presentation (251.13 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Consultancy (270.88 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Membership (257.77 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Visiting an external institution (259.7 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Hosting a Visitor (258.41 KB PDF)

Pure - Add Activity - Examination (260 KB PDF)

Record Prizes and Awards you have received

Use the Prizes module on Pure to record awards or other types of distinction that you have received for your work as a researcher. This may include a range of distinctions and research esteem indicators including medals, honours, competitive fellowships, commissions, elections to learned societies or appointments.   

Use the guide below to add a Prize record: 

Pure - Add New - prizes (303.5 KB PDF)

A short video has been created demonstrating how to add a 'best paper' prize. The principles in this video apply to all the other activity templates. Click on the ≡ icon in the top left hand corner of the video to skip to different sections. 

When it comes to the time when you have completed your Doctoral/Master’s Thesis, you will be required to submit the final version (after corrections) to Pure. Please refer to the step-by-step guide How to submit the final version of your PhD thesis for instructions on how to do this.

If you happen to be both, you may have two accounts in Pure following the import of postgraduate student data. It is University policy not to merge these two accounts for reporting purposes, so you are encouraged to keep using your staff account, provided you are a current (not former) member of staff. All the guidance on this page applies to student accounts only.  Please refer to the Your Profile page for guidance for staff.

When logging in to Pure, please make sure that you are signed in to your University login using the correct username and password, e.g. if you are logging in to Pure to access your student account, please make sure you are logged in using your student number and password. If you are already logged in with your staff username and password, you will need to log off and then re-login using your student number and password. 

To log out, please go to the University log in page. 

If you are experiencing issues with accessing Pure, please contact the Research Information Systems team at pure@ed.ac.uk. 

People submitting content to Pure should make sure that the material, to the best of their knowledge, does not contain anything that is libellous, defamatory or obscene, and does not contain copyright materials owned by a third party. Authors should also comply with the University of Edinburgh’s Research Misconduct policy.

Here are examples of some scenarios which may lead to misleading, offensive or inappropriate content: 

• Plagiarism: using other people’s material without giving proper credit  

• Fabrication: making up results or other outputs and presenting them as if they were real 

• Misrepresentation: for example, misrepresentation of data, of interests, of qualifications or experience, or of involvement, such as inappropriate claims to authorship or attribution of work 

• Copyright: including content owned by a third-party, e.g. images owned by a professional photographer, or publisher PDFs that are not openly licensed. 

• Legal: Including statements or content that can be deemed libellous, defamatory or obscene, or content that can cause reputational damage to the University 

• Confidentiality: Including sensitive information of a commercial nature, or disclosure of information confidential to the University 

• Out-of-scope: Content completely unrelated or irrelevant to the Edinburgh Research Explorer (ERE) 

If misleading, offensive or inappropriate content is identified the following process will be undertaken: 

• flagged content will be checked by an administrator who will make an initial investigation 

• If upheld, the administrator will determine if it is a result of user error or is deliberately misleading, offensive or inappropriate 

• For flagged content that results from user error, the student will be contacted and advised 

• For flagged content that is deliberately misleading or inappropriate, the content will be removed from Edinburgh Research Explorer (ERE) and the student's School/Centre Pure contact and supervisor will be informed 

• The School/Centre will resolve the issue internally, e.g. by involving the School Academic Misconduct Officer or College Academic Misconduct Officer if necessary