Research Newsletter - Issue 112: Information and Updates
Please click on the headings below for further detail:
Researchers considering an ERC Advanced Grant are invited to attend an upcoming webinar hosted by the EU-funded mERCury project. Titled “Towards an ERC Advanced Grant: from groundbreaking idea to successful proposal”, the session will provide practical insights into developing a competitive proposal, understanding the ERC evaluation process, and learning from experienced grantees and panel members.
Date: 29 April 2026 (10:00am Brussels time / 9:00am Dublin time)
Register by: 25 April 2026
Registration link
The European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) hosted a 2-hour online info session on 19 March 2026 to present the latest policy context and application procedure for the Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) 2026 call (application deadline 03 September 2026). A recording of the session is available.
The ENGAGED Roadmap was launched in Trinity College Dublin on March 11. The project is a joint initiative between DCU and TCD, funded by the National Open Research Forum (NORF). The Roadmap was developed through extensive consultation and co-creation activities with diverse sectoral stakeholders, and provides a path to enable greater public engagement with open research in Ireland.
DCU's Dr James Brunton, Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology, was co-PI on the project.
A new national Science Media Centre (SMC) was officially launched this Wednesday following a pilot programme over the past year. Researchers are reminded that the internal Communications team is the first port of call for promotion of research.
SMC is an organisation that works with academics to connect them with journalists and have their comments and opinions featured tangentially in news articles. The University has elected not to participate in this paid for programme in order to prioritise our established processes and channels for research communications and to not duplicate work for researchers.
SMC have previously contacted DCU academics directly, and we would ask if this occurs to please notify the Communications Office.
Recordings from the inaugural Open Research Week event held on 9-11th of February are now available.
The event was organised collaboratively by open research librarians in DCU, University of Galway, University College Dublin, University College Cork, and Queen's University Belfast. The programme included five speakers from DCU on open research practices and initiatives.
The implementation of Pure, DCU’s new research information management system, continues to move forward at pace. We are pleased to share several key milestones as we prepare for launch later this year.
Collaborative Configuration: Topical Sessions Complete
We have successfully concluded our series of topical workshops, which focused on areas such as Creative Outputs, Engagement, Teaching Resources, and Policy. These collaborative sessions were extremely engaging and productive, providing opportunities for discussions regarding how best to showcase and record the outputs and activities related to these areas. The invaluable insights from these sessions are directly shaping the system’s configuration. We are working with the system providers to determine how best to integrate the requirements and will be reverting to all session attendees with final suggested configurations. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this effort to ensure that Pure represents the full breadth and diversity of DCU’s research outputs and activities.
DCU Pure Webpage
In order to keep everyone up-to-date with the project implementation, provide resources and answer key questions, we have developed a webpage dedicated to Pure at DCU. The webpage currently provides information regarding what Pure is and what it’ll mean for DCU, along with key updates regarding the implementation project. It will be updated regularly to include the latest FAQs, implementation timelines and training resources.
For those interested in getting a sense of Pure and what the new researcher profile pages will look like, we’ve included a brief video on the webpage. It contains an overview of both the public-facing researcher profiles and the backend of the system, to provide you with a sense of what the new profiles will look like and how the system will work.
We invite you to access the Pure webpage and overview video here.
Key Milestones & Next Steps
- Summer 2026: Access will be provided to both Pure and Research Engine for a period of several months to allow transfer of data from Research Engine to Pure.
- September 2026: Go-Live of the new Researcher Profiles.
In next month’s newsletter we will provide details in relation to the system integrations and data migration activities. For now, please continue to use Research Engine and TORA as usual and feel free to contact us at researchsystems@dcu.ie should you have any queries.