A WordPress plugin for managing university research groups
AcademicCrew grew out of PoliMinds, the plugin I built for the MINDS research group at Politecnico di Torino. I took its core — managing a research group’s members, courses, projects and publications — and made it generic: no ties to a specific university, no institutional data hardcoded, ready for any department or research lab to use. What started as a bespoke project for one client became a product anyone can install on their own WordPress site.
Every member gets an automatically generated profile page, a searchable and filterable team directory, a course catalogue that adapts to the academic calendar (semester, trimester, quarter, or a single annual period), and a showcase for projects and collaborations. Publications can be entered manually or — on the Pro plan — synced automatically from ORCID, Google Scholar, an IRIS/DSpace-CRIS repository, and CrossRef, with three-level deduplication and automatic author matching across name variants.
It works with any theme: native elements for Avada/Fusion Builder and Elementor, plus Gutenberg blocks as a universal fallback. Colors, fonts, roles, project classes, and archive page text are all customizable from the admin panel — no code required.
Free vs Pro
- Members, courses and projects — Free up to a small cap, Pro unlimited
- Manually-entered publications — Free up to 10, Pro unlimited
- Automatic sync from ORCID, Google Scholar, IRIS and CrossRef — Pro only
- Native Avada/Fusion Builder and Elementor elements — Pro only
- Gutenberg blocks — always included, even on the Free plan
Try AcademicCrew
Start free right away and upgrade to Premium whenever you want, from $7.99/month.
Where it comes from
AcademicCrew is the generalized version of PoliMinds, built for the MINDS research group at Politecnico di Torino (DAUIN). See the MINDS project →
Documentation
Overview
AcademicCrew turns a WordPress site into a complete web presence for an academic research group. It manages member profiles, an auto-generated team directory, a course catalogue, a project/collaboration showcase, and — on the Pro plan — automatic publication sync from ORCID, Google Scholar, an IRIS/DSpace-CRIS repository, and CrossRef.
It works with any theme: Avada/Fusion Builder elements and Elementor widgets are provided for every feature, with a Gutenberg fallback so the plugin renders correctly even without a page builder.
Member profiles & team directory
Each researcher gets a profile page — photo, role, contact details, research areas, and a live publication/citation count — automatically generated the moment a member is added. The team directory lists everyone, grouped by role, with search and filtering built in.
Courses
A course catalogue with code, credits, teaching language, degree programme, and an academic-year-aware period system — semester, trimester, quarter, or a single annual period, whichever matches your institution’s calendar. Courses can be managed by hand or imported in bulk from a CSV file.
Projects & collaborations
A showcase for funded research and industrial collaborations, with a filterable archive (by class and status) and a dedicated page per project — team, partners, funding source, and outcomes.
Publications
Every publication gets a card with authors, venue, DOI, citation count, and one-click BibTeX export. The archive is searchable and filterable by year, type, and tag.
On the Pro plan, publications import themselves automatically from ORCID, Google Scholar, an IRIS/DSpace-CRIS repository (any institution, not locked to one provider), and CrossRef for metadata enrichment. Fuzzy deduplication (DOI → source ID → title/year similarity) keeps the same paper from appearing twice across sources. Automatic author matching cross-links every synced publication to the right member, course, and project — with no manual tagging.
Full customization, no code required
- Roles & Classes — rename, recolor, delete, or add member roles and project classes, right from the WordPress admin.
- Appearance — set the primary/secondary/accent colors and heading/body fonts used across every generated page.
- Archive page text — the eyebrow, title, and description shown at the top of the People, Courses, Projects, and Publications archives are all editable text fields.
- Academic year settings — configure the teaching-period cadence (semester/trimester/quarter/annual) and the exact date window for each period.
Works with your page builder — or none at all
- Avada / Fusion Builder — a native element for every shortcode.
- Elementor — a matching widget for every shortcode.
- Gutenberg — a server-rendered block for every shortcode, so the plugin works even on themes with no page builder installed at all.
No institution lock-in
Organization name, IRIS repository URL, and every other identifier are Settings fields — never hardcoded. The plugin ships with sensible defaults and adapts to any university’s branding and data sources.
Requirements
- WordPress 6.0+
- PHP 8.1+
- MySQL/MariaDB with InnoDB
License
GPL-2.0-or-later.
Screenshots
