The York Research Database (YRD): making content from PURE available publicly
The York Research Database (YRD) displays data from PURE via a publicly–available web interface in
a user-friendly and searchable format. It was launched internally in September 2012 and externally
in February 2013.
The YRD encompasses all aspects of the University’s research and publication activities, integrating
information about each researcher’s selected publications, funding, research activities and interests
to provide a real-time update of our research capabilities and expertise.
The YRD also makes full-text available by linking directly to files deposited via PURE into the White
Rose Repository Online (WRRO), a data archive for the universities of York, Leeds and Sheffield. Links
to DOIs and URLs, if added, will also be displayed.
Researchers can manage what is displayed on the YRD through visibility settings available on all
PURE content types. Staff profile pages in departmental sites should be linked to the YRD where
possible.
Former staff:
When a member of staff leaves the University their PURE profile is retained and visible on the YRD
unless otherwise requested.1 If you are a leaver and you wish your YRD personal profile to be set to
no longer be visible publicly, please contact PURE support ([email protected]; ext 2719).
Please note that your content will remain in the system but not linked to you.
There are a small number of staff who move out of the PURE system for other reasons (e.g. change
of contract to a teaching post). YRD profiles of these individuals also become ‘former’ since there is
no way to distinguish these cases from those leaving the University entirely. If you are affected by
this, we can set your YRD profile to be no longer visible publicly until such time as you return to an
academic or research contract.
Accessing the YRD
The YRD can be accessed in three ways:
(1) Via the following URL:
https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal
The YRD is accessible to everyone so there is no requirement to enter a username or
password. Once there, content can be searched for under various headings (Publications,
Researchers, Projects, Activities, Departments and units). An advanced search can be used
to find more specific content.
(2) From within PURE:
To view your information in the YRD directly from within PURE, there is a link in your
‘Personal overview’ section immediately under your name and organisation details.
Click on this to display your own research page in the YRD:
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The current policy is that there is no maximum period on retention of a YRD profile when staff have left,
however, we are considering setting a maximum of two years. Staff will be advised of any change in policy.
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(3) Via a shortened URL link (takes you directly to your own or a specific researcher’s page):
The URL generated when you link from your own PURE page is rather lengthy. A shortened
URL link can be derived from the original as the following example shows for Prof John Clark:
- Original URL to your own or a specific researcher’s page:
https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/researchers/john-andrew-clark(40d5639f-6a41-43fe8ec4-97d577f4ad9d).html
a.
- Remove the section after ‘portal/en’
- Replace with your own University of York email address
https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/[email protected]
This can be used on email signatures, business cards, personal websites or other
places where you wish to indicate your PURE link.
YRD content
Every PURE Personal user within the institution has their own page in the YRD which synchronises
and displays content externally, directly from their individual PURE account.
Information displayed by default in the YRD will include basic personal details, selected research
outputs, awarded projects funded by Research Councils, the European Commission or The Royal
Society and research activities.
Content is displayed on tabs and these will be created when information is entered into PURE (e.g.
the ‘Profile’ tab displays content entered in the profile information section of PURE , accessible from
the edit profile button on your personal overview page:
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If this section is blank, the tab will not appear in the YRD.
Managing visibility
The visibility of the main types of content is managed by the individual visibility settings within each
entry.

Profile - visibility defaults to ‘Public’ and is the setting which controls a user’s homepage
visibility in the YRD. This should not be changed by current staff as the profile is also used to
build up the departmental listing in the YRD. Note: The action of making the Profile not
visible will not hide other content (publications, activities, projects) unless its visibility has
been set to 'PURE users only' or 'Confidential' in the individual PURE record.

Activities – visibility defaults to ‘Public’. Please therefore ensure content is appropriate and
does not breach any confidentiality agreements. Settings can be changed on an individual
Activity if you wish.

Projects – Under current settings, only projects funded by RCUK (Research Councils), the
European Commission or The Royal Society are set as ‘Public’ by default - visible in the York
Research Database and in PURE. These bodies have a requirement for public visibility of
funded research projects and outcomes.
Other funders have different requirements and content in PURE must reflect these funder
requirements. These are currently set to 'PURE users - visible within PURE only' by default.
These are not visible in the York Research Database. Individuals are advised to check funder
requirements before setting projects as publicly visible in PURE/YRD.
NB: UK Health & Hospitals projects (DoH/NIHR/NETSCC/PRP-CCF/NHS) have specific
requirements regarding the contractual stage at which projects can be made publically
visible, in particular on projects where the University of York is a co-applicant rather than
lead applicant. The visibility of these projects should not be set to ‘Public’ until the award
has passed a specific contractual stage. The Research Grants & Contracts office will advise
the PI when this stage has been reached and public disclosure is appropriate.
Exceptions to this are Research Outputs, Applications, Awards, Datasets and Impacts:

Research Output (Publications) – visibility defaults to ‘Public’ however records will not
appear in the YRD until they have been checked by the Library, and had the workflow status
(visible at the bottom of the record) set to ‘Entry checked by Library’.
The Library aims to check records as quickly as possible, with priority given to outputs which
fall under the REF Open Access policy. The policy was introduced for Journal articles and
conference proceeding papers which are accepted for publication after 1st April 2016. The
output must be deposited as soon after point of acceptance as possible, and no later than 3
months after this date [this has been extended to 3 months after date of publication for 1
April 2016 - 1 April 2018]. Full details of Open Access and the next REF are available on the
University Library webpages.
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If an output needs to be visible in the YRD as a matter of urgency, users can request that a
record be checked by adding a comment in the ‘History and Comments’ section of the
record and ticking the box labelled ‘Library Pure Editors’. This will trigger an email to the
relevant team. To contact the team by email directly, their address is [email protected].
Please note that the Library does not check records which have the PURE publication states
‘In preparation’ or ‘Submitted’, or records with the visibility set to anything other than
‘Public’. This means that records for such outputs will not normally be visible on the YRD.
This is to ensure that records for outputs that are at the early stages of development or
which are not intended for public view are not made publicly visible inadvertently. “In
preparation” or “Submitted” records can, however, be made visible on request (by the same
means noted above for requesting urgent checking).
Please also note that “Non-Textual” outputs and records for older outputs, where there is no
manuscript uploaded, may be moved to the ‘Entry checked by Library’ status by a batch
process, rather than manually.
The checking stage is important not just in terms of information quality but also for the next
Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise; for publications to be eligible for REF, they
are required to be open access from the point of acceptance for publication. The University
also has requirements for open access from many of its funders and publishers. Full details
on the workflows and checking process can be found in the Research outputs checking
process document.

Applications – No grant applications, whether awarded or not, are displayed in the YRD. This
entire content type is excluded from the YRD and overrides the visibility setting on the
individual application record.

Awards – Information about Awards is summarised in the Project record. Relations can be
created between the two records in PURE so that more detailed information regarding the
Award can be seen in the YRD.

Datasets – these records are not currently included in the YRD.

Impacts – these records are not currently included in the YRD.
Changing visibility settings:
The visibility of content displayed in the YRD is set via a selection box in the template of each
content entry in PURE. This allows items to be marked as:

Public – Select this option to make content visible to PURE users and the outside world
(after checking by the Library, if appropriate).
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


Campus –This is not applicable at York as use of the computer network in some areas (e.g.
the Library) is open to the public so cannot be restricted by location alone.
PURE users only – Content is only accessible from within PURE at York (requires a PURE user
account). Select this option if you don’t want your content to appear on the YRD.
Confidential – Access is restricted to associated users and editors.
Use of Confidential visibility option. If a Research Output or Project record is so sensitive that
the visibility options of 'Public' or 'PURE users only' are not appropriate, before selecting the
'Confidential' option, please contact Anna Grey, the Research Strategy and Policy Manager
([email protected]) to discuss.
‘Confidential’ is not listed as an option for Activities as these are always added manually so
confidential ones should not be entered.
To access the visibility selection box (screenshot below), an individual must open their chosen
content item in PURE and scroll down towards the foot of the page, where they will find the Visibility
settings section. Changes can then be made here by selecting the relevant setting from the dropdown box.
Please ensure you click SAVE before exiting the screen otherwise any changes will be lost.
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Editorial Control:
It should be noted that editorial control is at the level of a piece of content and not on individual
fields, i.e. the visibility setting applies to the whole record and cannot be changed for just one of the
authors.
Highlighted Content
Highlights is a tab which contains your most recently added records. If you wish to specify
alternative content as your highlights, this can be done by setting up Highlighted Content CV.
This is available for Research Outputs, Activities and Projects, providing these types of content are in
your PURE listings.
To create a CV, hover over the 'Curricula Vitae' option in your Personal Overview menu on the left of
the screen and click on the '+' which appears:
Select the Highlighted Content CV from the list of options that appear:
To show a list of information which is directly relevant to you, type a space in the search bar and the
details will appear in the drop-down box (see screen shot below). You can also search for specific
records by typing in a keyword or name into the search field. Select the records you wish to
highlight.
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To finish, LH click ‘Save’ to save any changes and tick the 'publish' box so that the contents appear in
the YRD.
How to add a link to YRD from a department webpage
Updates to the YRD happen automatically once data is added to PURE. These pages compliment the
“Research” tabs of existing profiles.
Staff profile pages in departmental sites should be linked to the resources available in the YRD, thus
presenting the data in a clearer and richer light and preventing duplication of effort adding data to
PURE and to the CMS separately.
Adding the link to staff webpages
Adding links from an individual’s existing home page directly to their page in the YRD webpages is
very easy using the standard staff profile templates in the CMS. Whoever updates staff profile web
pages in your department can follow these steps to make the change:
1. In the CMS, enter the full URL of your YRD profile page into the new field called ‘York
Research Database profile URL’ in the 'Staff profile - overview' template. This is usually the
first content item in a staff profile page.
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
You can find your YRD profile page URL by searching for yourself on the YRD itself, or by
logging into PURE and clicking the 'My portal profile' link
2. Preview the page and you should see a prominent personalised link to the YRD above the
tabbed content on the page
3. When you're ready for the changes to go live, approve the modified content in the CMS and
the web page will update with the next publish cycle
The design and text contained within the link to the YRD is standard across all staff profiles and
cannot be modified.
If your department is not using the standard staff profile template, this may be a good opportunity
to switch. Otherwise, your departmental web team can download the graphic ( 8kb
download) and will be able to advise on how to create similar linkage from your pages.
Removing the 'Publications' tab from staff profile pages
We recommend removing the Publications tab from staff profile pages once the YRD link is
implemented. The prominent link to the YRD will allow the user much richer interactions with a
publications list than is possible on a standard page.
To remove the Publications tab, simply delete the appropriate content item in the CMS using the
drop-down menu alongside each piece of content within the page. Remember to preview the page
after making a change to check your edits have had the desired effect.
Adding the link to departmental webpages
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Adding links from research web pages in departmental sites directly the departmental pages within
YRD provides a useful starting point for exploration of the full range of a department's research
activities.
We recommend using one of the graphics below to link prominently to the YRD (download to your
computer and upload to your Media Library category to use in the CMS):
218px - for use in a sidebar
226px - for use in a three-column layout
350px - for use in a two-column layout
If you don't have space for a graphic, or for links within text elsewhere, we recommend using actionoriented link text similar to that used in the graphics above.
Need help linking to the YRD?
If you have any questions about linking to the YRD or need help adding the links, email the
Communications and Marketing Team at [email protected]
Why not feed data from PURE into existing web-pages?
One of the original aims for PURE was to make it easier for an individual member of staff, or a
research unit, to get their research information onto their websites in an accessible, searchable
format.
While it is technically possible to use web services to deliver data from PURE to an individual or
department’s existing web pages, the creation of the York Research Database and not the use of
web services was discussed, and is endorsed by, the PVC-Research, the Director of Information, the
Deans of Faculty, the Director of Research and Enterprise, the Director of External Communications
and the University Research Committee.
Delivery of information to individual web pages via web services has several drawbacks:
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
Firstly, there is a large resource implication in creating the correct ‘join’ between PURE and
an individual’s pages such that the data is formatted in a multitude of different ways
according to different conventions of each department or centre.

Secondly, data added to individual web pages would continue to be poorly-searchable via
the University search-box, meaning a visitor to our website aiming to find out about our
research may not find the information they require. The YRD provides a ‘one-stop shop’ to
find this information and has been carefully designed to lead the visitor from one piece of
content to another in an intuitive fashion. The results of searches include links to full text,
where available, URL links and bibliographic format data.

Thirdly, should a new piece of content or format be required at a future point, by having a
single resource for our research data, it is only this resource that needs updating, rather
than multiple web pages and sites. In the long-run, a more common approach to our web
pages will enable much faster evolution.
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