Esploro 2025 Release Notes
Click here to view the monthly release and maintenance schedules.
July 2025 Sneak Preview
The upcoming July release will include features such as:
- Asset History
- Additional control over Esploro content in Primo-VE
Main Features
The Author Matching Algorithm Supports Additional Languages
June 2025 Smart Harvesting
The Author Matching Algorithm tries to detect the research domains of the author and researcher using semantic elements like the title, abstract and keywords from the incoming asset and researcher information like areas of interest, research topics and keywords as well as metadata from any assets belonging to the researcher. To date the algorithm was able to do this only if the asset information is in English. Esploro now has a flow for translating relevant data to English, enabling support of additional Latin script languages.
The following languages have been tested with the translation flow – Danish, French, German, Italian and Swedish. Additional languages may be added in the future.
Important note: the translation flow is resource-heavy and will be activated only upon request. Please refer to Esploro Product Managment if you are interested in activating the translation feature.
Smart Harvesting now Handles up to 250,000 Records
June 2025 Smart Harvesting
A retrospective Smart Harvesting (which is run via the ad hoc “Run” option from the Smart Harvesting profile) is a heavy-duty job and is limited to a set of up to 50 researchers. There is also a limitation of up to 12,000 candidate records that can be returned from CDI. For most researchers this limit suffices, but there are some researchers with common names, for whom it does not.
The June release introduces a new feature to the Smart Harvesting profile called “Run a single researcher.” In this option, a single researcher is run at a time (as opposed to a set of up to 50), and up to 250,000 candidate records can be returned. This option splits the query by year and if necessary, by month, to ensure a manageable number of records are returned.
The new option displays under the “Run for a Set of Researchers” option. The option has two parameters:
- Researcher – selected from the Researchers list
- Start Smart Harvesting from this year - enter the year the researcher is likely to have started publishing to limit the number of candidate records. If a year is not added, it will default to 40.
Note that the option to “Notify researchers” has moved to a separate section for both the existing and new Run options, this is a shared configuration.
The system will first check how many records are returned for the researcher. If there are more than 250,000 it will notify the operator that the job could not run. In this case, try to shorten the period and/or add additional topics and other information to the Researcher record.
If this does not help, try to run a Smart Expansion job for the bulk of the years the researcher has been publishing.
The report for this type of run is the same as other Smart Harvesting jobs. Note however, that because the job splits into years and even months, each of which is a separate thread in the job, the success/failure in the report is not of the number of researchers that succeeded/failed but the number of threads.
More Control on use of OpenAlex in Smart Harvesting Framework jobs
June 2025 Smart Harvesting
Until now, in most of the Smart Harvesting Framework jobs, if the record has a DOI the system enhanced the asset with author affiliations and the Open Access status from OpenAlex. The following parameters have been added to all the Smart Harvesting Framework profiles in the General Details section giving you more control over the use of OpenAlex.
- Enhance author affiliations via OpenAlex – add affiliations from OpenAlex. If selected there is the option to add up to 5 affiliations or only the first.
- Override existing affiliation with OpenAlex affiliation in the record – if selected the affiliation from OpenAlex will be preferred to any affiliation/s that may already be in the record (e.g. the affiliation from CDI).
- Add Open Access status and link from Unpaywall via OpenAlex – add the Open Access status
In all the profiles, the options are active by default as this is the way the system currently works, with the exception of the Smart Expansion via Alma profile. This profile already had two of these flags. The 3rd flag, to add all or just the first affiliation, was now added, and defaults to “All affiliations”, which is how the system currently works.
Add a Field for Additional Name to the Researcher Record
June 2025 Management
The Researcher record now includes an Additional Name. This field is particularly useful in regions where multiple scripts are used, and can be used to store a name in an alternate script, for example in Chinese characters. The Additional Name can be configured to display publicly.
Additional Names can be entered manually via the Research Information Hub or the Private Profile, or they can be loaded using the SIS loader or Researcher API.
Additional Controls over Researcher Name Display
June 2025 Management
New configuration has been added to the Researcher Profile to control which name elements display in the Public Profile and in what order. The new fields that can be displayed are researcher title and researcher additional name.
Control over the order in which the name displays has also been added and now customers can choose if they want to display the First name or Last name first.
Qualified Dublin Core
June 2025 Data
Esploro has added support for publishing to Qualified Dublin Core. Qualified Dublin Core provides richer, more precise descriptions of research output metadata and is useful when sharing metadata with sources that require this additional data.
Additional Enhancements
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June 2025 Data
A field for Table of Contents has been added to the ETD schema.
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June 2025 Analytics and Reporting
We are adding a new subject area to Esploro Analytics – the “Collaboration Subject Area” - which will include internal and external collaborations. In the June release you can see the new Subject Area in Esploro analytics, but work is still in progress.
June 2025 Management
Customers can now configure session timeout for their Research Information Hub. The maximum timeout is 150 minutes. Customers can configure a single default timeout that applies to all users or they can allow individual users to configure their own timeout.
Resolved Issues
- June 2025 Management SF: 07972100
Asset failed to save when using Date created format as yyyy only. This has been fixed. - June 2025 Management SF: 07972100
Corrupt file preventing update to deposit. This has been fixed. - June 2025 Portal
Researcher Position displays twice in Brief Results when there are multiple affiliations. This has been fixed. - June 2025 Portal SF: 07797999
Display as member setting in Project member organization did not work and member organizations were always displayed. This has been fixed and now member organizations that are flagged as not visible will not display. - June 2025 Management SF: 07772537
Review Researcher revisions window does not display properly in Firefox. This has been fixed. - June 2025 Management SF: 07176608
Real-time notifications will no longer be sent by the job "handl empty thumbnails". - June 2025 Managment SF: 07143069
Previously affiliated researchers no longer display on the Proxy for list.
Main Features
Smart Expansion via CSV/Excel support Scopus ID and WoS ID
May 2025 Smart Harvesting
In Smart Expansion via CSV/Excel, the system gets as input a CSV or Excel file with several columns that identify the asset to be imported. The researcher is identified by one of the researcher's user IDs and until now the assets is identified by DOI and/or PMID and/or title. It is now possible to include two additional identifiers - Scopus ID and WoS ID. The column names are SCOPUSID and WOSID. The order of the columns is does not matter to the job.
Move to CrossRef schema 5.3.1
May 2025 Management
Esploro has moved to the latest CrossRef schema 5.3.1 from 4.4.1. As a result, Esploro maps additional data that in now included in the schema. The additional fields are: Researcher affiliations, institution identifiers (ROR, ISNI, wikidata), the ROR ID of the funder and the acceptance_date for assets of type book.
Relationships between Projects
May 2025 Management
It is now possible to add relations between projects in the Research Information Hub . Project to project relations include a type field which is used to describe the relationship between the projects. There are three relationship types that can be chosen from – related, higher level and lower level. Project to Project relations will be added to the Portal and Profiles in coming releases.
Post Asset API to Load Files
May 2025 Management
It is now possible to use the Post Asset API to add files to an existing asset. To do this, update the asset by adding a link to the file(s) and then run the Import Research Assets Files. This job uses the link that was added to the asset to retrieve the files from their remote location, loads the files to amazon storage and updates the asset with the link to the file in amazon storage. For more information about this process see Esploro documentation.
PUT action for Activities
May 2025 Management
It is now possible to update Researcher Activities using the PUT action. This action can be used to add or delete fields in the activity and to add or delete relationships between the activity and other Esploro entities. For more information see the Developers network.
Additional Enhancements
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May 2025 Smart Harvesting
If the record that Esploro gets from CDI includes the Scopus ID, it will be added to the asset as one of the additional identifiers.
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May 2025 Research Portal
It is now possible for end users to control the number of researchers that display on the results screen after performing a search for researchers. Currently nine researchers display and this can be increased to eighteen or twenty-seven
Resolved Issues
- May 2025 Management SF: 07041875 Event in the Researcher history had a time zone inaccuracy, this has been fixed.
- May 2025 Management SF: 07856047 The project gallery and logo sections did not always display, this has been fixed.
- May 2025 Management SF: 07775412 The export to CSV job failed if it included links to an external asset, this has been fixed.
- May 2025 Research Portal SF: 07927668 The OpenURL in the Esploro Portal did not work as expected and the Esploro file and link displayed in both the Esploro and the OpenURL sections. This has been fixed and each section displays correctly.
- May 2025 Management: Remove Chicago Turabian 16th edition from configuration tables. This format is no longer supported by CSL (Citation Style Language).
- May 2025 Smart Harvesting: The normalization of one of the single quote characters in the asset author name vs. the researcher's name was not consistent and as a result there was no match (e.g. D’Almeida). This has been fixed.
April Main Features
Move Researcher Information when Merging Researchers
April 2025 Management
When merging a non-affiliated researcher with another researcher, affiliated or non-affiliationed, Esploro will now move metadata fields in addition to moving the researcher’s related entities, if the corresponding fields in the target researcher record are empty. Lists of values are handled in a group. The copied information will be tagged as “Managed Internally.” This is relevant to the manual “Move all assets and grants” action from the Manage Researcher page and to the Bulk Merge Duplicate Researchers job.
The following metadata elements are copied (if they are not present in the target Researcher record): Current affiliations, Previous affiliations, Research topics, Keywords, Area of interest, Name variants, Education, Associations, and Honors. For more information see Working with Researchers.
SWORD Profiles
April 2025 Management
Admins can now configure SWORD profiles themselves using the new Configuration tables which are at: Configuration --> Repository --> Integrations --> SWORD Profiles.
The SWORD Profiles page lists the available SWORD Profiles and you can access the Monitor SWORD Imports page from the option at the top of the list.
Using edit profile it is possible to do the following:
- Make the profile active or inactive
- Control if the records come in as draft or approved
- Turn OpenAlex author affiliation enrichment on or off for the profile
- Turn OpenAccess status enrichment on or off
- Turn Researcher notification on or off
For more information about configuring SWORD profiles see SWORD Integrations.
MDPI via Esploro Direct from Publishers
April 2025 Management
MDPI has a program called the Institutional Open Access Program (IOAP) which enables your institution to receive feeds with metadata and PDFs of articles your researchers have published. You can find more details and contact MDPI to sign up here.
As a member you can enable the MDPI SWORD profile and send MDPI the SWORD server URL and your username and password as explained above.
Enhanced Researcher API
April 2025 Management
A new parameter called “include_fields” was added to the Get List of Researchers service. Use this parameter to add fields from the Researcher record to the output list of Researchers In addition to the fixed name and identifier fields that were already included.. This new feature will streamline your workflows and reduce the number of API calls that need to be made. For more information see the Developers Network.
New API Actions
April 2025 Management
Two new Put services have been added to the Esploro API gateway. These services can be used to update existing Organizational Units or Grants. Update includes changes to the metadata and changes to the relationships between the entity being updated and other entities in Esploro.
Some examples of how the Put Organizational Unit API can be used are: to move an Organizational Unit from one Parent to another, to change the Unit’s visibility setting, to make it inactive, and to add a Unit homepage.
The Put Grant can be used to add Researchers and to update the amount.
Additional Enhancements
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April 2025 Smart Harvesting
Additional Scheduling Option in Smart Expansion via Alma the job can now be scheduled to run daily.
Resolved Issues
- April 2025 Management SF: 07717398 There was a scenario in which a “ghost” researcher displayed in the Author Matching facets even though the researcher did not in fact have an author matching task since it was deleted. This resulted in incorrect counts in the Author Matching task list and an error message when the value was selected. All known scenarios that can cause this have been fixed.
- March 2025 Management SF: 07808037 When an asset was opened in edit mode by the Researcher, all Local fields in the record displayed. This has been fixed and now only Local fields that can be updated or added by the Researcher display to the Researcher when the asset is opened in edit mode.
March Main Features
OpenURL Enhancements
March 2025 Research Portal
Additional controls have been added to the display of the OpenURL on the Full Asset page in the Esploro portal. It is now possible to configure by asset type if the OpenURL should always display, should never display, or should only display if there are no files or links. Display of the results of the OpenURL continue to display in an iframe that is embedded in the full asset page. An example of a page that contains both Esploro and OpenURL links is shown below. For more information about configuring the OpenURL see Configuring the Research Portal.
Field for Display Date Added to Project Links
March 2025 Research Portal
A field for display date has been added to project links, is already available on project files. When present, the display date displays in the full project record. These dates are useful for describing the contents of files and providing a chronological context.
Scopus Records included in Smart Harvesting/Smart Expansion from CDI
Clarivate and Elsevier have signed an agreement allowing Esploro to retrieve Scopus records from CDI for common customers. If you have notified the Esploro team that your institution has a subscription to Scopus, Smart Harvesting and Smart Expansion from CDI will include Scopus records. If you have a Scopus subscription and you have not notified the Esploro team – please drop us a line and we will ensure your institution is included in this new feature. If at any time your Scopus subscription ends please notify us.
Get and Post Media Mentions API
March 2025 Management
We are continuing to expand our support of Media Mentioned, which are useful for demonstrating research impact. There is a new API endpoint for Media Mentions and two actions are available: Get and Post. Media Mentions display on Researcher Profiles, on the Full Asset page and on Research Projects. The new API endpoint will enable integrating with external sources to import and export Media Mentions. For more information about Esploro APIs see the Developers Network.
Configurable Banner Message for Portal and Profiles
March 2025 Research Portal
The new banner feature is available in the Portal and Profiles and makes it easy to communicate with your end users. The banner can be used to communicate short term messages like new feature releases or planned outages The banner message includes one or more text fields and an end date. The end date is the date when the message will cease to display. For more information about the configurable banner message see Configuring the Research Portal.
Additional Enhancements
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March 2025 Smart Harvesting
Improved matching of Author Affiliations to EROD - Author affiliations that Esploro may receive in the record from CDI or via OpenAlex are metadata and not codes and therefore Esploro tries to match the affiliations to an organization in EROD. This matching has now been improved by an additional normalization. In some cases, the affiliation may include department names (EROD only includes the top-level organization). This data is now removed.
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March 2025 Management
User Identifier Type Added to Esploro Configuration Menu - Esploro admins can now access the User Identifier Type configuration table from the Research Information Hub and no longer need to configure Esploro settings in Alma. The User Identifier Type configuration table controls which additional Identifier types are available for use and it also controls display in the hub.
Resolved Issues
- March 2025 Management SF: 07797103
Error in OAI Publishing job caused job to fail repeatedly. This has been fixed and now the job runs and publishes outputs even if there is a record that must be skipped. - March 2025 Management SF: 07123363
DOI metadata has been added to the Researcher Deposit Action Letter. - March 2025 Management SF: 07758497
Action buttons on Asset results page did not display in the order configured. - March 2025 Management SF: 07772336
Not all Activity search indexes worked. This has been fixed and indexes that do not work have been removed. - March 2025 Management SF: 07772537
Review Researcher revisions window does not display properly in Firefox. This has been fixed. - March 2025 Management SF: 07235315
Fix Author Internal Affiliation job was not updating all internal affiliations. This has been fixed. - March 2025 Research Portal SF: 07709093
Researcher with over one hundred proxies could not login to their Esploro Profile. This has been fixed. - March 2025 Research Portal SF: 06958190
The country names that displayed on the Download map on the Esploro homepage were not translated. This has been fixed. - March 2025 Research Portal SF: 07063044
Two fixes to the OpenURL sent for Esploro records - epublication date added to the list of dates included in the OpenURL and the DOI sent in the standard DOI format. - March 2025 Analytics SF: 07242456
The field activity files licenses has been removed from analytics since the field is not included in acitivity files. - March 2025 Smart Harvesting
There can be a scenario in which a previously affiliated researcher is deleted due to a merge with an affiliated researcher and they have pending Author Matching tasks. As a result, the Author Matching task list did not display. This has been fixed by moving the tasks to the target researcher with the status "Moved".
February Main Features
Export Search Results 
Records from the portal search results page can be multi-selected and exported with ease. Up to five hundred records can be selected across multiple pages. Export options are configurable and include Citation format, txt file, RIS, BibTex and push to RefWorks. For information about configuring export options, see Configuring the Research Portal.
Add and Display Media Mentions on Projects
In the January release we added the ability to add relationships between Research Projects and their Media Mentions from the Research Information Hub. With this release media mentions can be added to a project record in the researcher profile and displayed in the project record in the portal and also in the researcher profile. For additional information, see Working with Projects.
Move Creator to Contributor 
Creators and contributors can be easily updated and moved from Creator to Contributor or vice versa in a single action. The new action is available from the “Manage Creators/Manage Contributors” page for all asset types and categories except ETDs which rarely require such updates. Authors whose role have been changed will move to the end of the target list (creators or contributors). For additional information, see Working with Research Assets.
Duplicate Asset Record 
If you are adding an asset record similar to an existing asset record, you can now duplicate the existing asset in two easy steps. Find the record that you want to copy and select duplicate from the action menu. You will be prompted to select if you want to copy the "Deposit Owner" and "Asset to Asset relations" then select Save and the asset will be duplicated. All fields except DOI, handle, links, and files are copied. This new feature will increase staff efficiency, increase accuracy and reduce mistakes.
Rejecting Task & Asset For Asset With Many Researchers
In the Author Matching task list, there is a bulk action to “Reject selected assets and all matches.” If the selected assets have many authors, the deletion can take a lot of time and the action may time out. The system now checks the number of authors and if one or more of the selected assets have over 400 authors it blocks the deletion of that asset and displays the following message: “These assets have many authors and they should be rejected individually <asset ID, asset ID>”. The admin should reject the assets that are listed before reattempting bulk rejection.
In addition, the system displays the number of authors in the third column:
Add Researcher Draft Deposits to Analytics
It is now possible to view researcher draft deposits (i.e. before the researcher submits the deposit) via analytics. A new measure has been added - "Number of Researcher Draft Deposits" for counting the number of unsubmitted researcher drafts. Note that unsubmitted drafts are still excluded from the existing Research Assets subject area measures since they are not yet part of the repository and they cannot be displayed via the Research Information Hub.
Additional Enhancements
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February 2025 Research Portal
Users can now select the number of results displayed per page on the portal search results screen from predefined options 10, 20, 30. -
Esploro was updated to Angular v19
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February 2025 Management
The Research Information Hub administrative interface is now available in Japanese. -
February 2025 Data
GET Media Mentions has been added to the new API Media Mentions Endpoint. -
Esploro has added support for the 2025 SWEPUB list of Research Topics.
Resolved Issues
- February 2025 Management SF: 07778611 07778611URM-237246
SIS loader was not updating a NonAffiliated Previously Affiliated Researcher with a full platform user to Affiliated Researcher. This was fixed. - February 2025 Research Portal SF: 07138284URM-235986
Admin unable to update certain projects to visible in the portal. Specifically this happened when projects were added by researchers and made visible by the admin. This was fixed and now admins can control the visibility settings of all projects. - February 2025 Research Portal SF: 07498210
Files with file extension entered in uppercase could not be opened in the viewer. This was fixed. - February 2025 Research Portal SF: 07063044
Two fixes to the OpenURL sent for Esploro records - epublication date added to the list of dates included in the OpenURL and the DOI sent in the standard DOI format.
January Main Features
Researchers Can Edit Publication Details
Researchers can now update the publication details of an asset from their Private Profiles. The fields that can be modified are Volume, Issue, and Pages. For additional information about how researchers can edit asset information from their Profiles, see Adding Output to a Profile. For information about how admins can manage researcher updates, see Working with Research Assets.
Related Media Mentions Can Be Added to Projects
Related media mentions can now be added to a project record in the Hub. For additional information, see Working with Projects.
It is not currently possible to display related media mentions in the project page in the Portal. This functionality will be added in the future.
New Search Box in Collection Pages
A search box enabling users to search within the list of assets in a collection can now be included in the collection's page in the Portal. For each collection, admins can choose whether to include a search box in the Portal. This option is included in the configuration of each collection. For additional information, see Working with Collections.
Mapping of Asset Creators/Contributors Roles to CrossRef
Creator/contributor roles defined in your system can now be mapped to the types used in Crossref. Esploro uses these mappings to convert asset metadata in its database records to the required formats of these external systems before exporting the information to them. For additional information, see Configuring Asset Details.
Additional Enhancements
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January 2025 Management URM-232636
Pagination options have been added to the Researcher Updates tab of the Asset Details page. For information about this tab, see Working with Research Assets. -
January 2025 Research Portal URM-234055
Admins can now configure which icon should appear in the Portal for assets that are Free to Read – the default Open Access icon () or the alternative Free to Read icon (
). For additional information, see Configuring Institution Settings. Note that admins can also modify the Open Access label, for example, to "Free to Read"; see Configuring Access Rights and Licenses.
- January 2025 Analytics and Insights URM-231626
Four additional Awarding Academic Unit fields were added to Esploro Research Assets > Asset ETD Details for a total of five fields. These fields display the awarding institution/department of the ETD.Additionally for this development, the value of the Awarding Academic Unit field now changes if the name of the awarding institution/department changes.
Resolved Issues
- January 2025 Analytics and Insights SF: 07272749URM-230326
When assets contained any form of license information, but no license description was specified for the license, analytics reports did not include those assets. This was fixed. - January 2025 Management SF: 07760733 07772473URM-235122
When a grant was imported with a funder code that did not include the institution code, the Do not import and Overlay options were not implemented. As a result, if an attempt was later made to import another grant with the same Grant ID and Funder Code, the import succeeded, so that two copies of the same grant were incorporated into the database. This was fixed. - January 2025 Research Portal URM-235986
The Esploro Viewer was not able to stream YouTube videos, instead generating an error message. This was fixed. - January 2025 Analytics and Insights SF: 07230638URM-229016
The URLs of internally stored project files were not included in analytics reports. This was fixed.