Dear colleagues

The electronic Research Administration (eRA) system is designed to help both researchers and their support staff to capture and track the administrative processes around the research lifecycle more easily.

In the previous communication, we addressed your concerns around inaccurate information on your eRA profile and our plans to resolve them. We now would like to provide you with an update on the work completed by the eRA team thus far to resolve many of the system issues.

What has been done to update my eRA CV information?

The eRA team has successfully implemented a manual refresh and de-duplication of existing and new eRA data on 2 August 2020 to ensure that all data from the respective UCT source systems (SAP HR, SAP Finance and Peoplesoft) was imported into eRA. The following information was updated:

• Person records – updates on information such as contact details and demographic information
• UCT work affiliations and organisation data – to accurately display the nature of affiliation (staff, student or third party), what department you are/were in and whether you are active in that capacity
• The work affiliation data was merged into one affiliation per department for concurrent appointments to reduce the number of unnecessary affiliations in the system.

Further plans for 2020 include:

• Adding extra datasets such as undergraduates and/or honours students who perform research*
• Adding work and educational activities from UCT source systems so that this can be integrated into the researcher profiles and CVs
• Adding history data such as staff data prior to 2013 and student data prior to 2012*
• Archiving unused data; and removing all inactive staff and student data where there has been no research activity for several years
• Automating the refresh and de-duplication processes so that they can be run at regular intervals.

* dependent on system performance when increased volumes are added  

Do I still need to update my eRA profile?

We strongly suggest that your researcher profile be updated; that your publications list is accurate and up to date; and that you have connected your researcher profile with your ORCID ID. As we continue to expand the functionality available on the eRA system, an updated researcher profile will become imperative.

It is important to stress that even if your eRA profile is not accurate, it will not impact your pre-awards approval applications or the awarding of funding. In addition, until your profile is updated, you can choose whether you want to make it visible.

See our video and how-to guide on how to update your eRA profile here.

For more information on eRA, please see the eRA section on the Research Support Hub and, in particular, our how-to guides and videos here.

If you have any further concerns or require assistance with your eRA profile, please log a call via Service Now here.

We thank you for your ongoing support and engagement with the eRA.

The Research Announcement is produced by the Research Office, University of Cape Town.