Welcome to Symplectic Elements v7.1! 

In this release we are excited to launch the new Item Evaluation module, designed to streamline the evaluation of individual research outputs. The module enables a more flexible and focused approach to the evaluation of research outputs, supporting both continuous and time-bound review periods.  Symplectic Elements v7.1 establishes the foundations of this new module, with further functionality and refinement planned across coming releases.  

This release also includes several enhancements to the Awards Management module, aimed at improving the administrator experience and surface additional data for users. These improvements include greater flexibility in assigning reviewers, easier Funding Opportunity set up, surfacing Finance system information on the Project details page, and providing direct links to Symplectic Elements user profiles.

This release also contains a number of additional smaller features and enhancements.

As always, the new version of Symplectic Elements and associated upgrade instructions can be found in the Symplectic Elements upgrade forum.

The new Item Evaluation module in Symplectic Elements is a powerful new tool designed to streamline the peer review of individual research outputs, such as publications. This new module complements the existing Assessment module - which focuses on evaluating a portfolio of a researcher’s academic activity - by supporting item-centric reviews, giving you a dynamic new way to approach continuous or time-bound evaluation workflows.

Image: Item evaluation exercises

The Item Evaluation module expands our current offering by providing a more flexible and focused approach to individual item evaluation, complementing the existing Assessment module in its support for use cases like annual reviews and promotion & tenure processes. Together, the two modules will now make up our ‘Evaluation & Review’ solution.

The Item Evaluation module will enable you to:

• Review individual items to expand your workflow options and fit your specific assessment needs.

• Match the right reviewers to the right outputs, ensuring expertise is applied where it matters most.

• Run rolling, year-round reviews to assess outputs as they’re produced, not just at annual peaks.

• Support multi-disciplinary evaluations by allocating reviewers across different units and fields.

The new module will support distinct user journeys for everyone involved in the process - from researchers nominating their work and reviewers evaluating it, to managers coordinating the process and administrators overseeing the exercise. Each role will have specific features and functionality tailored to their needs.

Image: Managing a unit’s evaluation exercise

This initial foundational release includes the ability to:

• Create and configure Item Evaluation exercises,

• Create Units within an exercise, including selecting members and managers,

• Configure form fields for application in nomination, review, and overall outcome forms,

• Configure the nomination form for an exercise, and

• Nominate individual publications for review.

Image: Nominating an item for evaluation

When fully realised, the Item Evaluation module should support a wide range of use-cases, including:

• Peer review by subject experts,

• Annual collections,

• Impact case study reviews,

• Professional activity reviews for accreditation, and

• Metadata verification for efficient content curation.

For the next Symplectic Elements release (v7.2, planned for November 2025), we plan to enable:

• Configuration of review and overall outcome forms for an exercise,

• Selection of reviewer pool members for units,

• Assignment and dispatch of items to reviewers,

• Submission of individual reviews, and

• Recording of overall outcomes and the completion of individual item reviews.

The Item Evaluation module is available as part of the Symplectic Elements Evaluation & Review solution.  

• Clients that already licence this solution will have access to the module automatically.

• Clients who only currently licence the Assessment module should contact their Account Manager so a contract amendment can be arranged to upgrade you to  the full Evaluation & Review solution.

• If you’re not sure whether you licence the full Evaluation & Review solution, or just the Assessment module, get in touch with your Account Manager.

We have added a new Item Evaluation section to our support site, where all Item Evaluation support articles can be accessed, including further information on the functionality included in this release.

In this Symplectic Elements release, we are very pleased to introduce a number of enhancements designed to improve the Administrator experience in the Awards Management module, and to surface additional data for users. The new improvements: 

• Make it easier to assign Funding Opportunities to the ‘Approval decision meeting’.

• Deliver greater flexibility in assigning reviewers, beyond the proposal Managing Group.

• Provide a direct link to project team members’ Symplectic Elements user profile in relevant portal pages (e.g. Proposal details, Project details) and proposal form PDFs.

• Surface Project finance details on the Project details page in the portal.

As with previous releases, full details of the Awards Management functionality released in v7.1 are available in the Awards Management release notes on our support site.

• Following community feedback from the v7.0 release, we have applied several small visual and accessibility-oriented adjustments to the sidebar navigation menu. These changes include:

  • Updates to the font style of submenu headings to improve visual distinction and clarity.

  • Updated alignment of the sidebar icons.

  • Improved the skip link order of the impersonation banner for improved accessibility.

  • Updated the background color of the impersonation indicator that displays on the user photo so it matches the branding text color variations.

• We have introduced two new OA Monitor exceptions, as per the REF2029 Open Access policy, which comes into force 1 January 2026 (UK).

• Fixed an issue to ensure that email sending is successful when configured to connect anonymously.

• Added the 'Organisation' field type to the API for Grant funders, enabling the API schema, RT2 crosswalk, and relevance scheme hashing to handle organisation data.

• Added support for the 'funding acknowledgements' field in Relevance Scheme hash definitions. This allows a change in a publication's funding acknowledgements metadata to act as a trigger for an automated metadata update to the corresponding item in a connected repository.

• We have introduced support for Change Tracking in the Reporting Database.  Further information is available in this support article.

This announcement is only relevant to clients hosting their own instances of Elements. 

As part of the planned migration to Elasticsearch, an updated target date has been announced. The new target for the first release version to require Elasticsearch is v7.4, planned for April 2026. 

Please refer to the ‘Administering Elasticsearch’ support article for full details about this migration.

This announcement is only relevant to clients hosting their own instances of Elements.

Self-hosted clients will need to make changes to their IIS configuration, as described in the 'Elements Website hosting changes in v7.1' support article.

As always, we recommend you regularly review our End of Support Announcements for information about upcoming end of support in Symplectic Elements for various technologies. We would like to draw your attention to the upcoming end-of-support dates for versions of Symplectic Elements:

If you need assistance planning to upgrade, please contact our team via the Support Site. 

We hope you enjoy getting to know the latest version of Symplectic Elements. Should you have any questions, we’re here to help! Just contact us at support@symplectic.co.uk for assistance. 

Best wishes, 

The Symplectic Team