The RepNet was recently attending the SyRTUG (for Symplectic) and the Pure UK User Group meetings in Leeds and Dundee – thanks to Nick Sheppard, Leeds Met U, and Yvonne Fox, U of Lancaster, Symplectic and Pure UG coordinators, for kindly inviting us to be there. The RepNet delivered a presentation at both venues emphasizing the presently highly fragmented CRIS/IR landscape – with few research-intensive universities relying anymore on repository-only solutions for managing their research information needs – and the need for RepNet services such as the RJ Broker to serve the rapidly evolving range of system configurations running at institutions. Although the RJ Broker was originally conceived to deal with automated content transfers into IRs, the picture now is such that some mechanism needs to be found for talking to CRISes such as Pure or Symplectic too.

The chance to listen to additional discussions on issues such as REF reporting, Snowball metrics or ORCID implementation was also very useful for figuring out relevant activity timeschedules and opportunities for synergy with the different RepNet worklines for providing repository services.