Reporting: using the PURE Reporting Module
Overview
The Reporting module in PURE can be used to create tables, analyses and graphs from PURE data.
This document gives a brief overview of some of the functionality available using two examples: (1)
reporting for a personal user and (2) reporting for a departmental user e.g. Chair of DRC.
Further support is available through the Reporting module manual. This can be accessed from PURE
at any time by clicking on ‘Help and Support’ at the bottom right of the screen, choosing ‘Manual’
and selecting ‘Reporting module’.
Who can create reports in PURE?
Anyone who has been given the ‘Editor of’ or ‘Administrator of’ role on a particular output type can
report on their own content; anyone who has been given the ‘Reporter’ role can report on any type
of content for their home department. You can check which role permissions you have by clicking
on ‘Edit Profile’ in your personal homepage and choosing ‘Associated user’ from the left-hand
sidebar.
If you don’t have Editor or Reporter roles, you can use content filters (see separate user guide on
PURE home page) to explore content from other users. Personal users can also use the CV module
within PURE to generate CV-format reports on their own content (see separate user guide on PURE
home page).
Accessing the reporting module
To create a new report, make choose ‘Editor’ view from the top panel (under the PURE logo at top
left of screen). Hover over ‘Report definitions’ in the left-hand sidebar and click the ‘+’ symbol that
appears. Where there is a ‘C’ symbol, this means the ‘combined content’ report format is available
(see Example 2 below).
Report layout types available in PURE
Choose a content type e.g. research outputs. You will then be able to choose from up to seven
different report types (including a raw data extract). Report types other than ‘Raw data
spreadsheet’ can be exported in PDF, Word, Excel or HTML format.
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
Listing: Simple bibliographic list of data. For research outputs, you should be able to use‘
Vancouver’, ‘Harvard’ and ‘MLA bibliographic styles; for other content types, the format is
PURE’s ‘short’ format which encapsulates selected relevant data fields. Use this report if
you want a simple PDF list of your data.

Table: This report format gives you the option to select fields that you wish to include in the
report. These should be added using ‘Add columns’. This is a very flexible format and
probably the most useful in terms of configuring reporting to answer specific needs.

Table (analysis): Similar to Table but allows calculations to be done on the fields reported
e.g. count of publications by person/journal (sum, average, min and max functions also
available).

Matrix (analysis): As per Table (analysis) but allows analyses of more than one variable e.g.
count publications by journal and year.

Chart (analysis): Similar to Table (analysis) but with pre-configured graphical layout options
e.g. Stacked bar char, line graph, pie chart.

Raw data spreadsheet: Exports all fields associated with the selected content (Excel format)

Combined content: This type of report allows you to select particular projects or persons
and report on the content associated with these. It is particularly useful for gaining an
overall sense of research activity for a set of projects or department.
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It’s possible to add additional content types and layouts once you’ve chosen one of these options.
We’ve notice this can make the report module run slowly so if in doubt, separate reports may be
more effective. The following section explains how to add filter, groups and columns to your data in
order to configure a report.
Example 1: Personal user
The following steps give one example of a report that a personal user might want to run in order to
look at their own data (there are undoubtedly lots of other options!) In our experience the best way
to explore the Reporting module is to play around with the available setting and use ‘Preview’ to
check the results.
What does my profile of Activities look like in PURE?
This report would allow a user to gain a deeper understanding of what types of activities data they
have been adding to PURE and when these activities have taken place.
(1) Access the PURE reporting module as described above. Choose ‘Activities’, then choose
‘Matrix (analysis). This will generate a data table counting activities by type and year.
(2) Click on ‘Organisational unit’ (red box), then click on the person icon at the left of the screen
(green box). Type your name in the search box and click on it to select (you should now see
this in the right-hand panel.
(3) In the ‘Groupings’ column on the left hand side (red box), click ‘Add grouping’. Search for
and choose ‘Type’. This will bring in the type of activity.
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(4) In the main panel (x-axis, green box), click ‘Add grouping’. Search for and choose ‘Year’.
This will bring in the year the activity started.
(5) Click the ‘Preview’ button to see what the results will look like.
(6) Click on ‘Edit’ at the top of the screen, choose a suitable name for your report and don’t
forget to save (blue button at bottom left of screen). Closing the report without saving will
delete your work!
(7) At bottom of screen choose which format you would like use for the report
(PDF/Word/Excel/HTML). This will generate the report.
(8) If you choose to, you could extend the report by choosing additional layouts e.g. Chart
(analysis). To do this, select ‘Add content type or layout’, choose an appropriate report
format. In this case we’ll choose ‘Chart (analysis)’
(9) Click ‘Add grouping’ and choose ‘Type’. The layout below will generate a bar chart of total
number of activities for each type which complements the table
(10) Remember to save any additional changes (blue button at bottom left of screen). Closing
the report without saving will delete your work!
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Saving your report
Make sure to give your report a title so you can identify it in future. Once created, you will be able
to access the report through clicking on ‘Report definitions’ in the left-hand sidebar
Make sure Click ‘Save’ to save all changes before exiting the report. Pressing close without saving
first will delete your work!
You can share the report definition with other users as a ‘managed report’ and/or set the report to
run automatically on a scheduled interval. To do this, click on the white rectangle/arrow symbol at
the bottom of the report definition screen:
You can also use this menu to export the report definition (XML format) or to import report
definitions created by other users.
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Example 2: Departmental user
The following steps give examples of reports that a departmental user might want to run to get an
overview of their department’s data in PURE (there are undoubtedly lots of other options!). These
have been made available as managed reports in PURE, meaning that they have been created
centrally and is available to those with Reporter status (this means that it is not available to all users
of PURE - see above).
Using the data
It should be noted that much of the data available in PURE is reliant on input by individuals, and the
level of engagement within a department will affect how useful these reports are for understanding
the research activity across the department. Any numbers taken from the reports – such as number
of publications per head, or total number of publications in a year should be interpreted with this in
mind.
Reports in PURE should be one way of exploring the research activity within your department, and
should be used alongside information from the Management Information Gateway
(www.york.ac.uk/mi).
Using reports in PURE
When you have logged into Pure, click on ‘Editor’ [1]. This will then give you a side menu. Click on
Report definitions [2]. This will open a sub menu, where you need to select ‘Managed report
definitions’ [3].
Search for ‘DepartmentalReport’:
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Explanations of each report are listed below. Please note that although they are labelled ‘2014-15’
these can be adapted to any year period of your choice by editing the filters within the report and
saving a local copy (see instructions below).
DepartmentalReport_OverviewByPerson_AcademicYear_2014-15_PDF_Format
This report creates a PDF document, which lists the number of research outputs, projects, activities
and impacts by person, and then allows you to click on a link to be able to see the full details of the
research outputs etc. This report was demonstrated at Research Forum on 3rd October 2014.
DepartmentalReport_ProjectsByPerson_LiveInAcademicYear_2014-15
This report is the same as the report above, except it only provides data for projects. It is
recommended that this report is downloaded in Excel format.
DepartmentalReport_ActivitiesByPerson_StartedInAcademicYear_2014-15
This report is the same as the overview report above, except it only provides data on activities. It is
recommended that this report is downloaded in Excel format.
DepartmentalReport_ResearchOutputsByPerson_PublishedInAcademicYear_2014-15
This report is the same as the overview report above, except it only provides data on research
outputs. It is recommended that this report is downloaded in Excel format.
DepartmentalReport_OutcomesByPerson_AcademicYear_2014-15_ExcelFormat
This report enables the creation of an Excel document, which lists the research outputs, projects,
activities and impacts by their title, for a department, and then lists other relevant information, such
as the person associated with them. This report was demonstrated at Research Forum on 3 rd
October 2014. We suggest that the overview reporting format is a better report to use than this one.
To use these reports, you will need to ensure that your own department is selected. To do this,
select the report you would like to use – it will open in a new window.
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Click on ‘Person’.
Then click on ‘Organisational Unit’ [10]. Another window will open.
Type in the name of your department, and select it on the left hand side. It will then appear on the
right hand side. Press ‘OK’ in the bottom right hand corner. This is the same as for the PDF report,
apart from rather than clicking on ‘Organisational Unit’, you will need to click on ‘Persons’. You may
need to scroll to the left in order to see the ‘Persons’ option.
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You can also change the dates for the reports, if you want to see the information for different dates.
Information on how to do this is listed below.
The report is now ready to be generated.
You can choose how to download the report. We recommend Excel format for most of the reports.
This is because is enables you to explore the data in different ways. However, the level of use you
will get out of this will probably depend on how comfortable you are using excel. The easiest way to
do this is through filtering on the columns of data, or through using pivot tables – quite a good guide
to pivot tables is available at: http://www.excel-easy.com/data-analysis/pivot-tables.html. The IT
Training team previously ran a course on pivot tables. The guidance (written for Office 2007, but still
relevant for Office 2010 users) is available at: http://www.york.ac.uk/media/itservices/docs/training/materials/office2007/Pivot%20Tables.pdf The example file for this is still
available on the Teaching drive(T) at T:\IT Training\Pivot. Microsoft support is available at:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Quick-start-Create-a-PivotTable-report-0c220f35-e47849aa-beaf-24018b7f0f64
Saving a report locally
It is possible to save a report locally, so that you do not have to include the department name each
time. This will then be listed under ‘My Report Definitions’. To do this, when you are in an open
report, click on the ‘Save’ button in the bottom left hand corner. A box will then pop up. Change the
name of the report to something that is relevant to you, and press ‘Save’ again. Once you have done
this, the report will now be stored under ‘My Report Definitions’.
Changing the dates
The dates for the report have been set to the academic year 2014-15. You can change these yourself
within the report if you want to look at a different period.
When you are in the report, click on the relevant ‘Date’ option. The date field has different names,
depending on the type of content you are looking at (e.g. Publication date (Outputs); Start date
(Activities)). You will need to change the dates for each type of content.
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Once you have clicked on the date field, a new box will open:
Within this box it is then possible to report on academic year, calendar year, fiscal year (for current
year, last year, last 2 years etc.) and to include custom dates. Once your dates have been selected,
press ‘OK’ in the bottom right hand corner.
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Annex: Filters, groups and columns
This section gives some additional information on how to select data for your report.
Filters: Once you have selected the report layout type, you can select Filters to narrow down the
report to specific criteria e.g. a particular time period. To add a filter, click on the ‘Add filter’ button
(Organisational unit is mandatory – this can be left as the University of York, or specific departments
can be chosen).
Groups: Grouping the results is a way of organising the format of the report. For example if you
group by journal and count the records, only one value will be returned for each occurrence of the
journal. More than one grouping can be used at a time; the order of groups can be controlled using
the arrows above each group and you can remove a group by clicking on the ‘x’.
Columns: This is just another name for data fields. Click ‘Add column’ to add additional fields that
you wish to see in the report.
Remember that it is often useful to use the ‘Preview’ button to check the report before running in
full – this will allow you to check if the report is generating the type of data you expect to see!
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