FAQ

This page contains short answers to many commonly asked questions about Pure and provides links to the relevant wiki pages for more detailed explanations. Additionally, we try to keep this FAQ updated as new comments and questions are mailed to the helpdesk.

Why am I not able to log in?

There are multiple possible reasons why you have problems logging into Pure. Most commonly, people do not have a staff affiliation at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, which is a requirement to get a user account in Pure. See the page on accessing Pure for information on how to obtain a staff affiliation if you don't have one.

In some cases, technical issues in the synchronisations between the different databases prevent you from logging in. This can easily be fixed by notifying the helpdesk.

Other reasons for not being able to log in include using the e-mail address as username instead of the net-id (the part before the @-sign in your original e-mail address) or using a wrong password. If you forgot your password, you can reset it at https://idsapp.vub.ac.be/pam/pamlogin.php.

Students without staff affiliation do not have access to Pure.

I'm getting e-mails informing me about changes in my publications I haven't made. What's up with that?

Multiple options: first, you'll be informed if one of your colleagues adds you as a co-author on a publication. Obviously, this means you no longer have to enter the publication. As long as you were added as an internal person (if you've gotten the e-mail, this is the case), the publication will automatically be added to your record. Similarly, if you were accidentally added as an external person on a publication, it is possible that an administrator fixes this by linking the publication to your record.

The second possible reason for a mail like this is that an administrator made a change, specifically when a publication was placed in a different category. This is part of a large data cleaning effort that aims at improving legacy data quality. Feel free to contact us if you feel the change we made was a mistake.

How can I delete a duplicate publication?

You can't. If you need to delete content, send an e-mail to the helpdesk. Please include the identifier (left upper corner) of the piece of content and we will delete it for you.

How can I enter publications for another person or for research group/department?

==I received permissions to manage content for a group, but some content does not show up under Research Output. Why does this happen and how can I fix it?

==The data quality after the migration is pretty poor, what happened and what are you doing about it?

There were serious data quality issues in R&D-net and no migration can fix these automatically. As Pure is a very transparent system, many data quality issues have only surfaced after migrating. That said, we have been working hard to improve this, starting with deduplicating and improving reusable metadata such as journals, publishers and external organisations. We are also trying to improve the data quality of individual publications to comply with external requirements, such as the Flemish Research Information Space (FRIS). As there are over 100000 individual pieces of research output in Pure, it is impossible to fix everything. We encourage individual researchers to improve the quality of their data so they can generate clean CVs and their content is displayed properly on the portal. Moreover, we actively support concerted efforts to clean up the data for research groups or departments. Feel free to contact the helpdesk for further details.

I am head of a research group and want to update the information about my team. How do I go about this?

First of all, you need access to change the information in the organisation profile. This can easily be obtained by contacting the helpdesk. This will allow you to add or edit the description of the group and add contact information and links. However, you can not manage the composition of the team yourself. This is a consequence of the way access permissions in Pure work: membership of a team does not only involve access to the organisation, but also to the person profile of the members. In order to update the composition of a research group, please send an e-mail to the helpdesk with the updated composition of the group. In order to keep the list updated, you can either keep us updated of changes as they occur, or send us an updated list at regular intervals (for example, once a year).

What do I need to do about e-mails asking me to validate theses?

Nothing. Theses are not being validated at the moment, but the system will generate weekly reminder messages as it expects all content to be validated at some point. Usually, we turn these off when granting privileges, but sometimes this is overlooked. You can e-mail the helpdesk, or turn these off yourself under user settings (user name up right upper corner) > E-mail settings > Student theses. Change the settings from Mails are sent weekly to Mails are never sent.

Could you provide me with a list of publications from me/my research group/my department?

Sure we can! Send us an e-mail and we'll gladly provide you with what you need. However, Pure allows you to easily generate such simple reports yourself by filtering content along several dimensions. You can even save the filters once you're happy with the results, so you can run the same report again whenever you want.

I noticed a message that an upgrade to Pure was being installed, but what has changed?

Please check the page release info for more information about new releases.