This guide provides help with the Publications component of Elements.
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How the Libraries Can HelpThe Libraries does not subscribe to Elements, but some of its features make use of information from library subscription databases. For this reason, librarians can offer guidance on automating aspects of your Publications in Elements. N.B. Your workload report is generated from the information you add or claim in Elements. Each faculty member is responsible for creating and maintaining their own profile in Elements. Librarians will neither create nor maintain your profile for you. Check the Provost's Elements Help site for additional support, including a list of college and departmental Elements liaisons. |
About ElementsSymplectic Elements is a software system to collect and understand an institution's scholarly output. Elements is a subscription service paid for by the Office of the Provost and the Office of Research and Engagement. Elements has "elements," or categories, where you can list most of your professional activities, including teaching, grants, and publishing. This guide focuses on the Publications element only. Elements information is only visible to UT administrators. There is no public interface for the data added to UT's Elements.
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*If the automated publications search remains troublesome after adjusting search settings (or you already have an ORCID iD), look into connecting your ORCID iD to Elements (see below).
One option to quickly add publications: Get an ORCID iD and always add your publications there.
Following these steps, if your publications list in ORCID is up-to-date, your articles have a DOI, AND your publications are found in one of the databases indexed by Elements, your list in Elements will be up-to-date, too. By giving UT Elements permission to collect your list of publications from ORCID, your publications (when double-checked against the databases listed above) should appear in Elements without additional steps. And, any new publication added to ORCID should automatically be added to Elements, if it's also found in one of the databases indexed by Elements. Watch a brief video about the process.
What you enter in Elements is only visible internally to UT by default. What you enter in ORCID can be visible to the world.
Login to Symplectic Elements: https://elements.utk.edu
First time users should click on Pending publications. Review the list to see how many of your publications were found. The Pending list is created by an automated search of several publication data sources.
Your list is based on a default search set for all UT users.
If Elements found any publications through its automated search, review the Pending list of publications.
Then, decide how to proceed.
Claim those that are yours to add them to the "Mine" list. Reject those that are not yours to add them to the "Not Mine" list.
If this didn't find all your publications (a common issue), you can change the automated search settings to see if doing so will find more of your publications to claim.
Adjusting search settings will change the number of pending publications in your list. Before you begin, keep in mind that:
Important! Your final search settings greatly influence what the Elements automated publications search can find in the future. Make adjustments with care.
To change your search settings, click on the link that says "...modify your search settings" in the blue box of the Pending list. Alternatively, at the top of the page, click Menu, then chose Manage Publications: Search Settings.
Do you have too many results? Make your search narrower/more specific (Use with caution! Narrowing severely limits the number of hits.):
Do you have too few results? Make your search broader/wider:
If the automated search continues to miss some of your publications, go to Step 4. Important! Your final search settings greatly influence what the Elements automated publications search can find in the future.
If the automated search continues to miss some of your publications, import the missing citations or manually add them.
Manual entry should be your last resort. Manually adding publications is done through the "+ add" link on the Elements homepage near My Summary. It uses an assisted entry method that checks both Google Books and CrossRef. If you have an ISBN for a monograph, or a DOI for an article, enter it when prompted.
In many cases, a match will be found in either Google Books or CrossRef, and several fields in the manual entry screen will be automatically populated for you. If that doesn't work, see the directions on how to "Import from a Database or by DOI/ISBN" before beginning to add citations manually.
Look over your complete list of publications. Find the list by clicking Menu at the top of the screen, then choosing Manage Publications.
Important! Verify that the publication types, titles, dates, etc. in your profile are accurate. Publications are often misidentified by document type. For example, when importing citations, an article might be listed as a book chapter, or vice versa.
To edit a record, look for the yellow pencil icon ().
If you need assistance with any of the steps listed on this page, contact your subject librarian.
The Provost's Office has a UT Elements Help site that provide information on Elements outside of the Publications aspect.
Symplectic also has several detailed Elements guides with more information (Note: you must be logged in to Elements to view):
For issues relating to managing your profile, publications, or other data inside Elements, please contact the appropriate point of contact listed on UT's Elements Help Contacts page, which lists help by college and departmental liaisons.
If the above contact is not available, please contact the Office of the Provost at 974-6152.
If you have other questions, please note this message on the Elements login screen:
UT's Symplectic Elements Guide was created with information from the following sources:
The guide was created by Rachel Caldwell (Scholarly Communication & Publishing Librarian), overseen by Holly Mercer (Associate Dean for Research and Scholarly Communication). Directions for importing citations were developed by Jeanine Williamson (Engineering Librarian).