L’Open Access gagne du terrain ! Du côté de l’édition27/05/2013 Au-delà de ces mandats et politiques Open Access, 2013 a également vu différents acteurs de l’édition prendre position face aux modèles actuels: démission du comité éditorial du Journal of Library Administration, apparitions de nouveaux modèles de financement des publications OA, mais également création de l’Accelerating Science Award Program afin de récompenser les avancées scientifiques réalisées grâce à l’OA. 
L’Open Access gagne du terrain !27/05/2013 L’Open Access sera-t-il bientôt la norme pour la diffusion des publications de recherches financées par des fonds publics ? Tout le porte à croire au vu des nombreuses décisions prises par les gouvernements, les universités et les organismes publics de financement de la recherche. De fait, l’OA gagne littéralement du terrain en s’inscrivant aussi bien au niveau national qu’international. Au-delà d’une volonté affirmée de diffuser leurs documents de recherche en Open Access, certains pays comme les Etats-Unis vont même jusqu’à envisager d’inscrire ce principe dans la loi. Cette courte vue d’ensemble des prises de position marquantes de ce début d’année 2013 achèvera de vous en convaincre. 
ORBilu sort de l’œuf22/04/2013 C’est avec joie qu’ORBi annonce ce lundi 22 avril 2013 la naissance de son homologue luxembourgeois ORBilu, né d’un accord de partenariat conclu en mai 2012 entre l’Université de Liège et l’Université du Luxembourg. Cet événement transnational, fruit du travail mené depuis plusieurs mois sous la houlette des Directions des Bibliothèques des deux institutions respectives, est d’importance non seulement pour les deux équipes partenaires mais aussi et fondamentalement, comme contribution au développement du mouvement Open Access ! L’Uni.lu, bénéficie désormais d’une interface de valorisation de sa recherche à l’identique de celle d’ORBi, lui permettant de gagner ainsi en visibilité. Celle-ci pourra également, à l’instar de son grand frère liégeois, s’appuyer sur la mise en place d’une politique ambitieuse en la matière. 
I love open access20/03/2013 Following the publication in Le Monde newspaper of the article Savoirs. Un bien public convoité,(*) (Knowledge. A sought after public good) a community of university officials, teachers-researchers, publishers and library directors have wished to respond and express their support for open access to research results by publishing in Le Monde an opinion column entitled Qui a peur de l'open access? (Who’s afraid of Open Access?) You can now back this movement by also signing the opinion piece on the site I love open access. Le Monde has also subsequently launched an appeal for testimonies from people concerned: Chercheurs, quels sont selon vous les défauts du système actuel de diffusion des connaissances? (Researchers, according to you what are the flaws in the current system of disseminating knowledge?) (*)Cabut, Sandrine and Larousserie, David. Savoirs. Un bien public convoité. In : Le Monde (March 2, 2013). Also read: A qui appartient le savoir ? (To Whom Does Knowledge Belong ?) 
Obama and Germany on the right (Green) Path!01/03/2013 At the beginning of this year 2013, a breath of springtime air already seems to be pushing the American and German governments further along the Green Path. On February 22 the American public made public its policy concerning better access to the results of the research it funds, thus taking the path initiated by the National Institutes of Health. For its part Germany could go much further. A modification in German law concerning copyright which will be considered in September could render inalienable the right of researchers to freely disseminate their articles on the internet, the same being also true in the case of a transfer of copyright to the publisher. 
Making open access to research results more widespread29/01/2013 At the 5th Open Access Days organised by the Couperin consortium in Paris, Bernard Rentier, the University of Liège’s Rector, and Paul Thirion, Director of the University’s Library Network, were invited to present the ULg’s Open Access policy.
All the videos of the presentation and the question-answer sessions which took place at the Open Access Days, January 24 and 25 2013, are now available via the Webcast site. 
The Presidents of French Universities and the CNRS unite around OA22/01/2013 The year 2013 gets off to a flying start for the Open Access movement. The 5th Open Access Days, organized by the Couperin consortium, will take place in Paris on January 24 and 25, 2013. Important actors within the movement will come together to think through the central themes of ‘Making access to research results more widespread' and to clear the ground for the main planks of a pro-active policy in this area. How to achieve 100% accessibility to the results of research funded by public money, and within the best possible time limits? That is the question the European Commission is asking all of the Union's Member States, which are invited to take a position on the widespread deployment of open access to the results of their research, in a European Commission recommendation, dated July 17, 2012, and from the perspective of the Horizon 2020 program. 
Open Access Mandates in Belgium - the FNRS and the UCL have green fingers.28/12/2012 Excellent news for Open Access in Belgium at the end of this year! After the signing, on October 22, 2012, of the Brussels Declaration on Open Access by Belgian ministers, two new institutions are providing their contribution to the development of the Green Road in Belgium. Le The Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) and the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) have made official the setting up of an obligatory deposit mandate similar to that established by the ULg in 2007. 
Berlin 10 Open Access Conference23/11/2012 The first African University to have signed the Berlin Declaration, la Stellenbosch University is also the first on the African continent to have hosted and edition of the Berlin Conference on Open Access its 10th, this November 7 and 8. The theme this year, ‘Networked scholarship in a networked world: participation in open access,’ allowed subjects such as the following to be addressed:
Open Access: the Belgian Ministers commit themselves! The Brussels Declaration on Open Access31/10/2012 On the occasion of Open Access Week 2012, a conference day, Open Access to Excellence in Research, was held on Monday October 22 at the Brussels Palais des Académies. After a presentation on Open Access policy on a European level as well as a discussion with a panel of experts on the aspects of OA policy to be implemented in Belgium, the day was marked by the signing of the: Brussels Declaration on Open Access to Belgian publicly funded research This declaration, signed by the representatives of the Ministers Paul Magnette (Federal Science Policy), Jean-Marc Nollet (FWB) and Ingrid Lieten (EWI), defines a Belgian policy concerning open access to academic and scientific information. It affirms the support of the Belgian government to the Open Access movement and makes it the default means of circulating the results of Belgian academic and scientific research. 
Green Road first!26/10/2012 The ULg actively supports the Green Road for Open Access, on an institutional level of course with ORBi, but also on a Belgian and European level. The Green Road allows scientists and academics to publish where they wish whilst rendering their publications available to all via open repositories or archives. Why this commitment to the Green Road?
1,000,000 downloads for ORBi already!25/10/2012 What excellent news for this Open Access Week: ORBi has just crossed the threshold of one million downloads ! And that in only taking into account real downloads carried out by the users (*). For the month of October 2012 over 2,400 downloads per day have been noted! An excellent sign of recognition on the part of ORBi users, situated around the entire world (**), but also a concrete reflection of the success of a bet launched in 2007 with the establishment of an ambitious mandate which is now recognized as a benchmark ('the Liège mandate'). In effect the latter strongly pushes researchers to make the integral text of their publications accessible via the internet and thus allow them, and the ULg, to gain maximum visibility. 
Open Access concerns all of us! Part 2 – What is the situation for publishers?24/10/2012 'Open Access means death to the publisher, above all in human sciences!' Wrong! Whilst it is true that the Open Access movement began as a reaction to the exponential rise of the prices charged by the groups of publishers which monopolize the world of academic and scientific publishing and one of the indirect goals of OA was to push them to adjust their prices to fairer proportions, it in no terms whatsoever means the death of publishers. And for certain of them it could even mean quite the opposite.. 
Open Access concerns all of us! Part 1 – Researchers, universities and citizens24/10/2012 Open Access is a wonderful opportunity for researchers, innovators, teachers, students, media professionals and the general public. It encourages the circulation of knowledge on a planetary scale and thus contributes to academic and scientific discoveries, innovation and socio-economic development (UNESCO Declaration, 2012). Open Access for researchers and universities It has now been proven that publications deposited on Open Access are cited much more than those which are less accessible because they have to be paid for. At the level of ORBi, an article deposited on Open Access is downloaded on average 2 times more than those on restricted access. 
Don’t fall into the trap: this is not Open Access!23/10/2012 They call it Open choice,OnlineOpen,Universal Access,Author choice,Author solution… Starting in 2003, confronted by the range and scope taken by the Open Access movement, numerous publishers have decided to jump on the OA bandwagon by offering their authors the hybrid model. But this model (not to be confused with the reverse model) is especially pernicious. Behind the pro Open Access image the publishers wish to project hides a genuine swindle!
The ULg is participating in Open Access Week 201222/10/2012 From 22 to 28 October 2012, the 6th edition of Open Access Week is taking place, an opportunity for the international research community to act and exchange ideas and information in favor of Open Access. The slogan this year, Set the default to Open Access, refers to the objective by which, in ten years time, open access will be the default means of making known and spreading new research, in every domain and in every country. The University of Liège has once again decided to take active part through a vast OA promotion campaign (video, news, poster campaign, etc.) based on qualitative aspects. There will moreover take place, in Brussels on Monday 22, a study day on the theme of Open Access to Excellence in Research. 
BOAI 10 - Setting the default to open access01/10/2012 The text 'Ten years on from the Budapest Open Access Initiative : setting the default to open' has just been published, at the end of this September 2012. In this declaration, some thirty experts reaffirm the principles and the objectives of the 2002 Budapest Initiative, and once again commit themselves to keep pushing forward in drawing up a series of recommendations. They focus on the political aspects, the licenses and their reuse, infrastructure and long term development as well as promotion and co-ordination. A new objective has moreover been established: 'In ten years, open access will be the default solution for the dissemination of new research, in every field, and in every country.' 
ORBi has just passed the benchmark of 50,000 references with full text16/07/2012 ORBi has just passed the benchmark of 50,000 references with full text, which represents close to 61% of the deposits! According to the April 2012 Webometrics ranking, ORBi is now in 26th position worldwide amongst the institutional repositories as far as fulltexts are concerned (33rd in 2011) and, more generally, in 18th place amongst the European repositories (27th in 2011) and 39th out of 1435 on a world level (46th in 2011). 
Study on Open Access in French-speaking Belgium05/07/2012 The BICfB consortium has studied the development of institutional repositories in the Belgian French-speaking universities and the active involvement of our teachers and researchers (as editors in chief, members of an editorial board, peer-reviewers, etc.) in the life of academic and scientific journals on Open Access, or at the least freely available on the web. According to that study, ORBi counts for 2/3 of the Open Access publications of the Belgian French-speaking universities. 
Horizon 2020: 80 billion Euros from the European Union to boost publication on Open Access!31/05/2012 According to a recent article in Times Higher Education, the European Union has decided to move up a gear as far as Open Access is concerned.In effect, through the 80 billion Euros which it has decided to devote to research and innovation through the Horizon 2020 project, it has decided to prioritise open access for published research which it funds in the framework of ‘Open Access will be the norm’. It thus involves a significant widening of the pilot experiment carried out in the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). 
ORBi inspires others! 08/05/2012 This Thursday, May 10, the authorities of the University of Liège and the University of Luxemburg will sign a cooperation accord concerning Open Access. This joint programme aims at establishing an Open Access strategy and policy within the University of Luxemburg which leans on the ULg’s expertise, as well as setting up an ORBi institutional repository ORBilu based on the model developed at Liège. 
ORBi is now OpenAIRE compliant19/04/2012 The main objective of the European OpenAIRE project (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) is the placing on free access of publications benefiting from European Commission Funding (within the 7th Framework Programme) or funding from the European Research Council. The researchers who benefit from the project in the 7 predefined disciplines are obliged to place the results of their research online, to enable consultation of the integral text on open access throughout the entire world with a maximum embargo period of 12 months. ORBi is now compliant with OpenAIRE 
Publications on Open Access: investigation in the French-speaking Community of Belgium13/03/2012 The Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique (BICfB) is studying, at the request of the Rectors of the Universities in the French-speaking Community of Belgium and the F.R.S.-FNRS, the development of Open Access in French-speaking Community of Belgium. They in particular wish to obtain insight into the active involvement of the teachers and researchers of their institutions (as an editor in chief, member of an editorial board, peer-reviewer, etc.) in the life of academic and scientific journals on Open Access, or at the least freely available on the web (including the most recent issues). The enquiry is open up until March 31, 2012. 
10th Anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative08/03/2012 Alma Swan interviews Stevan Harnad after BOAI 10 in Budapest.
The goose that lays the golden egg! 27/01/2012 The enormous and sumptuous profits raked in by scientific and academic publishers are regularly commented on by the international research community. In the article entitled 'The enormous profits of STM scholarly publishers', Heather Morrison, with figures to back up her argument, once again illustrates their indecent nature:
Happy 2012 Open Access Year10/01/2012 The end of 2011 highlighted the remarkable growth of various Open Access initiatives set up on an international scale, as is emphasised by Heather Morrisson, the author of the blog, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics. Some striking indicators:
Global Open Access Portal launched at the UNESCO meeting10/11/2011 The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) presents a snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world. 
More citations thanks to Institutional Repositories and Open Access !28/10/2011 According to numerous studies based on the very exhaustive Open Citation Project, Open Access leads to a significant increase in the number of times a reference is cited (between 2.5 and 5 times than is the case for a paper article). 
Your publications more accessible, a more rapid visibility27/10/2011 Immediate and barrier free access to the latest research results is essential. Today over 20% of the whole of the worldwide academic and scientific literature is already available on Open Access: 8.5% through journals which are on open access and 11.9% via institutional repositories (Björk, 2010). Figures which are constantly rising ! 
Liberate your publications completely legally26/10/2011 More and more publishing are adopting a policy which favours Open Access, and are authorising the depositing of publications on open access on an institutional repository such as ORBi, at the minimum the final author version accepted for publication (author postprint). 
The ULg is participating in Open Access Week 2011 (24-30 October 2011)24/10/2011 From October 24 to 30, 2011, the 5th edition of Open Access Week is taking place. This event is the opportunity for the international research community to exchange ideas and act in favor of Open Access. This year the University of Liège has decided to participate actively by being behind various initiatives, including the interview with researchers closely connected to ORBi and Open Access. 
Already over 40,000 references with integral versions on ORBi!30/09/2011 That thus means that over 6 out of 10 references available on ORBi come with at least one document in an integral version! An important fact which needs be pointed out is that amongst these integral text documents we are witnessing a constant increase in the proportion of those which are deposited on Open Access (OA). Around 44% in the first months following ORBi being up and running, this ratio has climbed constantly to reach 57.4% for the year 2011 (the average since ORBi was launched is 50.3%). And that is an encouraging sign of ULg authors becoming more aware of the philosophy and advantages of Open Access, all the while respecting each author’s rights. And it is also of huge benefit to the authors in terms of visibility as, since the beginning of 2011, we are now seeing over 1000 downloads per day being carried out (after having excluded access gained by research engine robots and spiders)! And that includes weekends, public days-off and every type of holiday! 
Open Access Workshop : Brussels - 28 September
201119/09/2011 The Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) wishes to contribute to the promotion of the first strategy advocated by the Budapest Initiative on Open Access through the organization of a workshop focusing on the 'Green Road' model in the context of Open Access to scientific and scholarly literature. Although they aim to implement greater accessibility and visibility of research, policy initiatives from stakeholders in scientific research have not achieved maximum efficiency yet. The objective of this workshop is to bring together actors from universities, research centers and funding agencies to identify pending issues in the management of institutional repositories, both in terms of scientific dissemination and measurable impact on scientific publications and communications. 
European Consultation on the access to scientific information28/08/2011 At the end of 2011, the European Commission will adopt a text on access to and the conservation of digital scientific information which will spell out the specific actions to be taken at Member State level. In this context the EC has established a consultation process. As an Institution the ULg is already putting into action a strong policy of promoting free access to scholarly research information and the dissemination of research data. Today this enquiry offers an opportunity for all the actors concerned (individuals, institutions, organisations, etc.) to express their points of view and provide input into a thinking through of the policies and the options to be considered, as well as their possible impact. The consultation is open up until September 9, at the European Commission web site. The questionnaire only takes a few minutes to complete, and the results will be published in the Autumn of 2011. 
Berlin9 (B9) Open Access Conference, Nov, 9-10, 201107/06/2011 The ninth installment in the Berlin Open Access Conference Series, which convenes leaders in the science, humanities, research, funding, and policy communities around The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, will take place at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on November 9 & 10, 2011 outside Washington, DC. The conference theme will focus on the impact of open access in research and scholarship. More information on http://www.berlin9.org/ 
The new version of BASE is now available25/05/2011 The new version of BASE, one of the biggest multi-disciplinary search engine for academically relevant OAI-sources is now available at www.base-search.net. It was created and developed by the Bielefeld University. Through a VuFind interface, you have now access to more than 28 million documents from more than 1.780 repository servers. Information is updated on a more regular basis. ORBi is harvested by BASE since January 2009 (Content sources informationn). 
Open Access in Belgium and elsewhere: sustained growth!!!15/04/2011 In this month of April, ORBi has reached a new landmark: 60,000 references, of which over 36,000 (60%) are provided with full text versions (50% of them available on open access). An international visibility which is booming as we can observe on average over a thousand daily downloads which originate from all over the world! Open Access today: becoming more and more essential! Currently over 20% of the whole of the world's academic and scientific literature is already available on Open Access: 8.5% in periodicals on open access and 11.9% via institutional repositories (Björk, 2010), figures which are constantly growing. 
The new interface for DOAJ31/03/2011 DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is offering a new interface to access over 6300 academic and scientific journals and 540.000 articles in open access. There is the possibility of:
Survey on effects of self-archiving and author experiences09/02/2011 As part of a research project conducted by students at the University of Uppsala (Sweden), we invite you to participate in an online survey on the impact of Open Access. Focus will be on what changes can be noticed by the single researcher with the shift from non-OA publishing of research articles to self-archiving. Link to the survey : https://survey.mamut.com/s?s=20424 (until March 2nd 2011) Thank you for your contribution! 
ORBi: new functionalities for ULg researchers08/12/2010
Open Access boosts your citations!02/12/2010 For a researcher the increased impact of their work is a benefit of great significance amongst the numerous advantages offered by Open Access. Proof of this is that the citation rates of publications deposited in institutional repositories or other open archives is rising sharply. 
Publication of the report : the development of open archives in France (in French).03/11/2010 This report presents the results of a research project carried out in 2009 at the University of Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3. Its objective: to evaluate the results of the policy in favour of open archives in France. 
International Open Access Week (from October 18 to 24)14/10/2010 Open Access just a footnote? For the 4th consecutive year, the international research community is communicating and acting in favour of Open Access. 
Some OA news in brief21/09/2010
Open Access workshop (Metz - 21/09/2010)06/09/2010 The Universities of Lorraine organize on the 21st September a workshop dedicated to the Open Access movement. Rector Bernard Rentier and Paul Thirion, Director of the ULg Library Network, will present ORBi, the institutional repository of the University of Liège, and PoPuPs, the portal for the publication of scientific journals edited at the ULg. Inscription needed (before the 10th September - free) 
The ULg, ranked 35th in the world for its institutional repository08/07/2010 With ORBi, the ULg is the highest placed Belgian university in the Ranking Web of World Repositories 2010, which measures the impact of publication repositories on the Internet. 
ORBi will be present at Open Repositories 2010 (OR 2010): 5th International Conference on Open Repositories (Madrid, July 6th - 9th 2010)02/07/2010 Repositories increasingly play a pivotal role in the emerging information landscape. Through the format of blending general conference sessions that cover cross-cutting and overarching issues, followed by open user group meetings for DSpace, Fedora, and Eprints, Open Repositories attempts to create an opportunity to explore the challenges faced by user communities and others in today's world... 
40,000 references and first use of ORBi within the context of the of evaluation of ULg researchers 28/05/2010 Over the last year, thanks to the active involvement of the ULg researchers, ORBi has seen the number of its references growing from 10,000 (news of June 2009) to 40,000. Out of these, 25,000 are with full text. According to ROAR, this is the third highest growth rate among the 1,000 identified institutional repositories among the world. 
Just published: a guide to legal aspects of scientific publication06/05/2010 The guide Aspects juridiques de la publication scientifique. Guide pratique à l'attention des membres de la communauté universitaire, written by Laurence Thys, lawyer and assistant at the Graulich Library (ULg), has just been published. It is available in Open Access at http://hdl.handle.net/2268/4277. 
New functionality: Generate your publication lists12/02/2010 ULg researchers can now generate their complete publication list, those of their laboratory or research team, etc. This can be made quickly and with a well-crafted format. This functionality will be specially useful for F.R.S.-FNRS candidates who can easily produce their publication list in the requested format. Presentation session: 
An OA Self-Archiving Policy for Ghent University06/02/2010 After the University of Liège and the Academie Louvain, Ghent University adopted an OA mandate. The Ghent University mandate is an Immediate Deposit and Optional Access mandate. Deposit is mandated not only for research articles but also for books, book chapters and conference papers. Documents must be deposited in the University’s institutional repository, in author postprint version and at the latest upon publication. 
Major RoMEO Upgrade Released19/11/2009 A major upgrade to RoMEO, publisher's copyright & archiving policies database, has been released:
Good news! An English version of ORBi is now available 06/11/2009 The public interface as well as the submission process (accessible to ULg members) are both available in English from now on. More visibility can thus be given to the ULg's publications on international websites. 
ORBi's typology – a new document type15/10/2009 There is a new document type in ORBi from now on : "Scientific conferences in universities or research centers". 
The spread of institutional repositories in French-speaking Belgium17/09/2009 After the launch of the institutional repositories of the University of Liège, ORBi (November 2008) and the University of Louvain, DIAL (March 2009), the Free University of Brussels has also now placed its research output into its institutional repository, DI-fusion. 
"Vacation tasks for inattentive researchers" : recall09/09/2009 Another important step will be taken by the next academic year with ORBi as the unique source of information for academic assessments at the ULg (promotions, allocation of funds, etc.). 
The ULg's doctoral students can now deposit their publications on ORBi18/08/2009 Several improvements have been made to the reference deposit form, in terms of encoding authors' names. The most important consists of the addition of the possibility of selecting co-authors within the ULg student database (Penelope). A function which has been much awaited by ULg doctoral students who are not members of the university's personnel. 
ORBi statistics15/07/2009 ORBi has now added a statistical data tool. General statistics regarding the number of new references (growth of the directory) and the number of views and downloads are generated daily. There is also a top 20 of the most downloaded references and detailed statistics for each archived item. 
CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI6)17/06/2009 - 19/06/2009 "The workshop is aimed at those involved in the development of openaccess (OA) repositories and who can influence the direction of developments either within their institution, their country or at an international level (...)". 
ORBi has passed the benchmark of 10,000 references03/06/2009 This event was marked by the organization of an afternoon symposium spent discussing the development of ORBi and institutional mandates, in the presence of Tom Cochrane, Queensland University of Technology (Australia). |
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