Pure

Pure allows you to capture and record a wide range of activities and outputs related to research and scholarship. 

Some details, like PGR supervision and external research funding, are synchronised from university systems; while others, like research publications, can be imported electronically or input manually.  Pure also enables researchers to capture a range of esteem factors, impacts, media attention, and academic activity.

If you already have an ORCiD account https://orcid.org/ you can connect this to Pure and transfer content between the two systems.

Find out more about connecting ORCiD to Pure 

Researchers at the University of Aberdeen are expected to record their research outputs in Pure.

We also encourage researchers to record research activity, such as conference attendance or public engagement, and other esteem factors such as prizes and nomination to learned societies.

Personal and institutional webpages for staff are populated from the publication and supervision data added to Pure.

Content in Pure can be used as part of the personal reporting functionality.  Information in Pure also contributes to discussions at annual research reviews.

At institutional level, we use Pure to enable open access, populate our open access repository AURA, add information to Staff Pages, and to populate the public research portal.

Pure can also be used to facilitate preparations for institutional submissions to funders and government, for example the Research Excellence Framework https://www.ref.ac.uk/ or annual funder reporting through Researchfish.

Public access to data in Pure

When set to 'public', in the visibility settings, data from Pure can be made available and accessible to the public.

There are several ways that the data in Pure is made available and accessible to the public

Publication portals

The Public Research Portal displays research outputs that have been entered in Pure, the University's research information system.

The research portal links to the Aberdeen University Research Archive AURA where open access full text publications are available to read for free.

University webpages

Data from Pure is used to feed publication lists on staff, research group, research centre and School webpages

Data from Pure about student supervision is also used to feed information on staff pages, this data is synchronised from the student records system and made visible via Pure.

Connections to third party services

Pure feeds data to third party services such as ORCiD. This is controlled at an individual level as each member of staff needs to connect their ORCiD and authorise the export of content from Pure

Pure feeds data to JISC run services such as IRUS-UK, which collects usage statistics for repositories, and Equipment data, which helps to make sure that UK research equipment and facilities can be discovered.

Pure connects to publication databases like Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science to collect information on new publications and suggest publications for import into Pure

Three major releases of Pure are issued by our software provider every year, the Pure team test and review each upgrade before rolling out a new version. The next upgrade to Pure is scheduled for 26 May 2026, this upgrade will also include a move to a cloud hosted environment.  

What can I expect during the upgrade?

Upgrades can take anything from a few hours to a full day. Updates to existing data and the introduction of new features do carry some risk, so we ask you not to log into Pure during an upgrade. By not accessing pure during an upgrade you give our IT colleagues time to carry out the upgrade and you avoid the loss of any data should we have to rollback or reject an upgrade.

What will happen to publication lists on staff pages?

Publication lists on staff pages or university web pages will not be available during the upgrade. These pages are generated dynamically from Pure and rely on system availability to display publication lists.

Publication lists can normally be accessed from the public research portal; the research portal does not rely on the same dynamic connection as staff pages and stores data even when the Pure is unavailable. However for the upgrade on 26 May 2026 the public research portal will be unavailable as it will undergo a full refresh as part of the move to cloud.

Can I still notify 'paper accepted' of new publications?

Yes, the email service paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk will still be available, although the Library team will not be able to add your publications to Pure until after the upgrade has finished.

What can I expect after an upgrade?

During a minor upgrade most users will not experience any changes as many of the updates happen in the background, affecting only those with administrative roles.

During major upgrades users may see the introduction of new features or changes to some of the layouts within the system.  We will share updated user guides where required. The upgrade on 26 May 2026 should be considered a major upgrade; information on the new URL and new system email address will be shared with users.

Who can I contact for more information?

For more information please email pure-feedback@abdn.ac.uk 

On 26th May 2026 Pure is moving to a cloud‑hosted environment. The system supplier requires us to do this to continue support for Pure. 

What this means for users of Pure

• System Unavailable – From 25 May 2026 to 1 June 2026 the system will be unavailable as various tasks are undertaken.
• New URL: The address you use to access Pure will change. If you have it saved as a bookmark or favourite, you should update it once the move is complete.
• New system email address: The email address used by Pure to send system notifications will change. You do not need to take any action, but please be aware that messages from the new address – purehosted@elsevier.com are legitimate system communications.  Any internal abdn email address you use to communicate with the Pure support teams at Aberdeen remain unchanged e.g. paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk, research-activity@abdn.ac.uk, or pure-feedback@abdn.ac.uk.  
• No changes to your content or features: All existing content in Pure will remain exactly as it is. All features you currently use - including background synchronisation to University Staff Profiles - will continue to function as normal. 

Pure and the Pure portal gather metrics from a range of sources, including Scopus, PlumX and Altmetric. 

Find out more on our SharePoint pages Alternative-Metrics.aspx