Symplectic Elements collects information about a faculty member’s published work by searching online databases, such as Scopus and PubMed. Because of similarities between authors’ names on publications, it is recommended that you modify your search settings. This will narrow down the results that come back for you. (For example, a researcher named John Smith can have results returned for not only himself, but also other researchers who go by John Smith, J. Smith, etc.) Claiming author identifiers will also improve the search.

The directions below outline how to set up your publication settings so that your database searches are as effective as possible. These should be followed in order.

• Step 1 - Automatic Claiming
• Step 2 - Modifying Search Settings
• Step 3 - Clearing Pending List and Running Searches
• Step 4 - Pending Publications
• Step 5 - Manually Adding Missing Publications

For an overview of this process, watch this video about curating publications in Elements.

Step 1 - Automatic Claiming

As Elements harvests publication information from databases, it will group publications together that belong to the same external profiles (ie. Research database identifiers like Scopus ID or ORCID). You can then confirm whether or not each of those profiles belongs to you. Elements can then automatically claim publications that belong to the author IDs that you have confirmed.

1. Go to faculty.tufts.edu and log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
2. Click the Menu icon in the top left corner of the page. Then, in the Settings menu, select Automatic Claiming.
3. If you have published papers, you may see a list of author identifiers that belong to you on this page. For one of the suggested author identifiers, click on the link for the associated publications. Look at the publications that belong to that ID to check that they belong to you.
   • If the author ID belongs to you, click on the Yes button.
   • If the author ID doesn’t belong to you, click on the No button.
   • Click on Ignore if you do not want Elements to automatically claim or reject publications belonging to this author ID.
4. Depending on what you selected, a different confirmation window will appear asking you what you would like to do about the publications that are attributed to the author ID.
5. Select whether you would like Elements to automatically claim, reject, or suggest publications belonging to this author ID.
6. Click CONFIRM to confirm your choice.
7. A confirmation will appear when the action is complete. Click OK to continue.
8. Repeat this process for all of the author IDs listed.
9. If you know that you have an author ID that is not showing up in the automatic claiming list, you can enter that ID manually on this page as well. To do so, scroll to the bottom of the page and find the “Add external profiles” section.
10. Click on which type of database author ID you would like to add.
11. In the window that appears, enter the author ID. Click SEARCH to see publications associated with this ID and double-check that it’s the right one.
12. Click NEXT.
13. Select the action you want Elements to take with this author ID and click CONFIRM.
14. A confirmation message will appear when the action is complete. Click OK to continue.
15. Repeat this for other author IDs you wish you manually add.

Step 2 - Modifying Search Settings

Next, you will want to give Elements the correct parameters to use for searches, and then re-run those searches. This will improve the process by which the system finds publications and author IDs, increasing the number of results while eliminating as many false positives as possible.

1. Click on the Menu button toward the top left of the page.
2. In the “Settings” menu, select Name-based Search.
3. Scroll down to the Name-based search terms box.
4. Name variants – Enter the different variations of your name that have appeared in your publications. Always put the last name first. (For example, name variations that might have been used for the name John Jumbo could be: “Jumbo, John” and “Jumbo, J.”) After each name variant that you add, you must click on the Add   () button. If you need to delete one of the name variants, click on the Delete () button next to that variant.
5. Addresses – Ignore.
6. Start date – Enter a date that represents when you started publishing work. Be sure to use one of the recommended date formats. This will prevent Elements from harvesting older publications and accidentally attributing them to you.
7. Keywords – Ignore.
8. Journals – Ignore.
9. Article ID – Ignore.
10. Source-specific name-based search terms – Ignore.
11. Click on the Save button at the bottom of the page when you are done!

Step 3 - Clearing Pending List and Running Searches

Once you’ve entered new search settings, you will want to perform new searches on the databases that Elements uses for harvesting publication data.

1. Click on the Home icon toward the top of the left-hand toolbar.

    

2. Find the Publications tile.
3. Click the Options button and select Clear pending.
4. You will be asked to confirm your decision. Click CLEAR.
5. Click the Menu button toward the top left of the page. In the “Settings” menu, select Name-based Search.
6. Click the Run my searches button.
7. Wait until all of the searches run successfully before moving to the next step.
8. Return to the automatic claiming page (Menu > My Profile > Settings > Automatic Claiming) to see if any new author identifiers have been suggested. Claim and reject IDs as needed.

Step 4 - Pending Publications

Even after modifying your search settings and claiming your external database profiles, you may have some publications that you will need to either claim or reject on an individual basis.

1. Click the Menu button toward the top left corner of the page. In the “My Work” section, select Publications.
2. Click on the Pending tab.
3. Scroll down to the list of pending publications.
4. Determine whether each pending publication is yours and click Claim or Reject for each.

Step 5 - Manually Adding Missing Publications

After going through the steps above, there may still be items missing from your publications section because they were not found in a database during the search. Other items (book chapters, published conference papers, etc.) are not well-indexed by these databases. For a description of how to manually add items to your publications, visit the Editing Your Profile page.

1. Go to faculty.tufts.edu and log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
2. Click the Menu icon in the top left corner of the page. Then, in the Settings menu, select Automatic Claiming.
3. If you have published papers, you may see a list of author identifiers that belong to you on this page. For one of the suggested author identifiers, click on the link for the associated publications. Look at the publications that belong to that ID to check that they belong to you.
   • If the author ID belongs to you, click on the Yes button.
   • If the author ID doesn’t belong to you, click on the No button.
   • Click on Ignore if you do not want Elements to automatically claim or reject publications belonging to this author ID.
4. Depending on what you selected, a different confirmation window will appear asking you what you would like to do about the publications that are attributed to the author ID.
5. Select whether you would like Elements to automatically claim, reject, or suggest publications belonging to this author ID.
6. Click CONFIRM to confirm your choice.
7. A confirmation will appear when the action is complete. Click OK to continue.
8. Repeat this process for all of the author IDs listed.

1. ​​​​​​Go to faculty.tufts.edu and log in with your Tufts username (e.g. jjumbo01) and password.
2. Click the Menu button toward the top left corner of the page. In the “My Work” section, select Publications.
3. Click on the Pending tab.
4. Scroll down to the list of pending publications.
5. Determine whether each pending publication is yours and click Reject or Claim for each.

To make ongoing profile maintenance easier, Elements periodically searches through several online databases, finds publications that could potentially belong to you, and suggests them for your profile. You can then claim or reject these pending publications.

Depending on the type of publication and where it was found, these items may include article and journal impact scores, which can be found under the Metrics tab. Elements draws this citation and article metric data from sources such as Scopus, Web of Science, Altmetric, and more.

When viewing these metrics, keep in mind that citation counts from different sources may vary. This can happen for a number of reasons, depending on which databases Elements includes in its searches, how far back those databases go, the type of content they index, whether they remove self-citations, how quickly they index articles, and more.

For example, you may notice a lower-than-expected citation count on one of your publications. One possible explanation could be because Elements does not use Google Scholar as a source for citation information.  And since Google Scholar covers more articles, their citation counts are often higher than what the same article might see in Web of Science or Scopus, which indexes fewer journals.

The Hirsh Health Sciences Library maintains a great research guide on measuring research impact that includes more detail on article and journal impact.

For more information, see this article from Elements on what data sources they use for citation and article-metrics data, as well as some of the advantages and disadvantages of each.