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Data Interoperability between Pure and ResearchfishData Interoperability between Pure and Researchfish
Reporting on the outcomes of research is an important requirement for research funding organisations. The information is used so they can demonstrate and communicate the impact of their investment in funding, to maintain transparency and to advise and direct future programmes and funds.
Note: This guide covers data interoperability options between Pure and Researchfish, as well as between Researchfish and Pure.
Researchfish is a tool commonly used by funding organisations to manage their research outcomes reporting process, in which the recipients of grants and their institutions submit their research outcomes during an annual submission period. Pure can be used to create data to send to Researchfish.
This will help:
- Reduce reporting burden
- Import outcomes data from CRIS or similar systems into Researchfish
- Primarily Research outputs, but also support for some other outcome types (from Datacite)
- Two main areas of functionality within Researchfish
- Interoperability Uploader
Researcher Records (supports the uploader)
Requirements of Pure records to be imported
- Have funder and grant information.
- Needs to match with Researchfish data
- … but if no funder / grant information, then can use the Researchfish ‘Researcher Records’ feature
- For the submission, Research outputs sent from Pure must have a persistent ID: one of…
- CrossRef DOI (Research outputs)
- PubMed ID (Research outputs)
- Datacite DOI (publications, Audiovisual & Image, Dataset, Software)
Adding funder Information to Pure outputs and exporting for use in submission
Note on Funding Information in Pure.
Funding Information can be added to Pure in several ways; For how-to's on each please refer to the sections below.
- By linking publication/research output information to Projects and Awards
- This method uses the Pure Unified Project model to record the sum of Research output generated by an award.
- When added via Projects, the information is collated for reporting and showcasing purposes
- This method focuses the recording of funding information to the projects directly managed by the organisation
- By adding funding information text to the Research Output on import from an external source
- This method uses funding information stored in the metadata of the source that the publication is imported from.
- This method includes ALL funding information associated on the record irrespective of the institutional project relationships
- Funding Information added via this method is NOT automatically associated with project/award records in Pure
Note that both methods described can be used to populate funding information, and for the purposes of Researchfish are not exclusive. They may be used in a complementary manner to broaden coverage of reportable data.
Option 1: Linking of Research outputs to Projects and Awards
To be included in the Pure export, Publications and other Research outputs must have been previously attributed to Grants/Awards via the Project content type
Associate Publications and other Research outputs with Projects and Awards using the Project option in the Research Output relations section on the content type. See screenshot below:
Option 2 -Import of Funding Information from external sources
Funding information may have also been added to research outputs via import from an external source (added as option from Pure v5.28.0 - More details are found in Funding information, text and details):
- On import from Scopus or PubMed
- If using the Scopus Publication Import/Update Job
- if the configurations allow Available updates to add the details
When the funding detals are added, it will show as below; Funding Details include funder ID and external organisation where available:
Steps to produce Researchfish submission report from Pure
Note: This guide refers to the use of the Researchfish Interoperability upload feature. This feature must be enabled per user in the Resarchfish interface before being able to upload the prepared template containing research output information. Please refer to Researchfish guidance for more information.
While Pure does not have a direct integration with Researchfish, it is possible to make use of the Pure reporting module to prepare the necessary information to be transferred. This process can be semi-automated via the use of standard reporting, but manual preparation of the submission file IS required. Reporting format files are provided here as guidance, but are not prescriptive and may be adapted on an individial institutional basis.
Match Award references - Potential challenges
The Award IDs in Researchfish are from the funders, and as such are the canonical IDs and should be the ones referenced in the interoperability uploads.
- Award references in Pure may therefore need to be reconciled with those from Researchfish in the event you have different Award IDs used in Pure.
- Examples of differences occur because;
- Eg, extra characters, different “punctuation marks”
- Award IDs are synchronised to Pure via corporate finance system
- Other variations
- If you can not update your Award records to use the same ID as Researchfish, you will need to map between the 2 sets of IDs.
- Awards not marked as “shared” in Researchfish
- Awards where your researchers aren’t the Award holder, but you’re not identified as an “other organisation” on the Award
Steps to produce Researchfish submission report from Pure
Step 1: Update funder ID on Pure external organisations
Optional - Update external organisations via the Bulk Change IDs on Content Job to include the Researchfish funder ID – sourced from the uploader template.
The XLS file structure: Pure ID and the classification scheme holding the funder ID, and the funder ID to populate the funder ID with.
The file downloaded from Researchfish with funder IDs.
Note: Adding the RF Funder ID onto relevant organisations in Pure is not essential, but will assist in preparing the final submission upload
Step 2: Prepare the Pure report using the provided template (Option 1)
Import the provided JSON report format. Upload into Pure and prepare the data to be exported.
Note that the data available may need to be filtered/adapted dependent on local use.
Download file: Researchfish uploader
Researchfish submission - funding information details.json (Right click, download)
Step 3 – Prepare the Pure report using the provided template (option 2)
Note that the data included in the Option 2 report may include duplicates of data exported in Option 1, so will require cleaning before use in upload
Download file: Researchfish uploader
Pure - Researchfish uploader.json (Right click, download)
Prepare the Interoperability upload file from provided template
- Populate the interoperability template which can be downloaded from Researchfish
Populate the interoperability template (cont.)
Using the prepared Pure output report, populate the interoperability template with the necessary fields – noting that NOT all fields from the report are mandatory, but may assist in future logging/remediation work if required
Populate the interoperability template (cont.)
- Upload into Researchfish, from pt. 3 in the screenshot below:
Review responses
Review responses (cont.)
Updating Pure with Award/Research Output attributions from Researchfish
Pure provides a bulk update job that enables institutions to use information exported from Researchfish to bulk associate award/project data with publications.
Information on how to export data from Researchfish for use in the bulk update job is available via the attached webinar on Data Extraction.
This job must be enabled by Elsevier, so please reach out to Pure Support for assistance.
Once data has been extracted from Researchfish, it must be prepared for import into Pure.
The Import is completed via use of a simple 3 column XLS file that matches content to Pure ID (publication, award and project) as shown:
Structure of the XLS file for the job:
Published at April 17, 2025