CRIS and retirement of repositories? | UKCoRR

"Recently there was a discussion on the UKCoRR mailing list around whether institutions implementing CRIS (Current Research Information System) like Pure (formerly Atira, now owned by Elsevier) might retire their repositories in favour of a single system. Other CRIS systems include Converis (now part of Thompson Reuters) and Symplectic Elements (part of Digital Science’ portfolio) N.B. Elements is more publication management system than full blown CRIS, and unlike Pure, does not manage files in its own right; it needs to be integrated with a traditional repository so retirement is not an option. As an addendum it is worth noting that all three systems are owned by well known commercial organisations operating in academic publishing and scholarly dissemination*, diametric to the Open Source credentials of EPrints and DSpace repositories, still by far the most popular systems for managing open access research in the UK and globally, whether on conjunction with a commercial or part of a homebrew institutional CRIS. * see related discussion from Stevan Harnad and with his typical candour – Elsevier’s PURE: self-interest and exploitation The responses are presented below, summarised by Dimity Flanagan from the London School of Economics; sources have been anonymised ..."