What is Offline Search?
Offline Search is a background Synchroniser process that looks for new links between users and their publications or grants that Elements has previously harvested. This maximises the number of links between users and harvested items, increasing the overall quality in data in your Elements system.
Effect on cleared links
There is one situation where Offline Search can be a hindrance. If a user's search terms are too wide and have resulted in many incorrect results, you may wish to clear their Pending lists. In this case, Offline Search will begin re-linking the cleared items to the user, often immediately.
To avoid this situation, the best way to proceed is to:
Impersonate the user.
Navigate to Profile & work > Tools & settings > Search settings.
In the 'Source-specific name-based search terms' section, turn off name-based searches by unchecking the 'Search by name' box for all data sources. This will prevent Elements from immediately running new searches on the data sources.
In the 'Name based search terms' section, amend the search terms to narrow the results.
Save your changes.
Navigate to Profile & work > Outputs > Publications or Profile & work > Research Funding > Grants & contracts and open the 'Pending' tab.
In the help box, click the link 'and then clear and recalculate the Pending list'.
When this is done Offline Search will respect newly added search terms. It will ignore any data source specific search terms.
When you are happy with the new search terms, re-enable the name-based searches.
NB: It is also possible to clear a user's publications or grants from the bottom of the homepage when logged in as an Administrator
Offline search and Web of Science Lite
One idiosyncrasy is WoS Lite data, which does not include affiliation information. Elements can submit a search containing both Name Variant AND Affiliation, but the results that are returned will not have any Affiliation data. Therefore, narrowing a user's Address search terms will not prevent re-linking of the publication when Offline Search runs. The only way to remove these links permanently is to Reject them manually.