10 years of Open Access at ULiège

Each year in October is held the Open Access Week, a week of international promotion of the movement of free access to scientific information, initiated in 2002. This year the University of Liège celebrates the 10th anniversary of the signature of the mandate making  obligatory the integration of the references of the publications of its academics and scientists within ORBi. 10 years later, ULiège has a few newcomers to its family: PoPuPs, MatheO and DONum.

Open Access, the movement initiated in 2002 by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, is enjoying growing success. This movement, which aims to allow the widest possible dissemination of scientific information without any economic or other barrier, so as to facilitate the dissemination and development of knowledge, has, since 15 years, been joined worldwide by numerous academic institutions.

The University of Liège is part of the pioneers of the movement by becoming, in 2007, the 10th institution in the world to sign the mandate making the deposit of scientific references in its institutional directory obligatory. Called ORBi (Open and Repository Bibliography), the digital repertoire has become essential. The scientists and academics of the ULiège are indeed convinced of the interest of depositing their texts in Open Access, which improves their visibility but especially their referencing and their quotation rate.

Since its inception, the movement has grown and the institution's commitment to Open Access has been confirmed with the creation of new tools such as:

• PoPuPs, the publication portal for scientific periodicals
• MatheO (Master Thesis Online) is the gateway to the University's master's thesis.
• DONum (Deposit of Digitized Objects), the portal for the valorization of heritage collections of the University, which now houses Arm@rium, a digital library of the Middle Ages and the first Modernity.

10 years of ORBi at ULiège

10 years is also the time for a review and to embark on a few statistics but it is especially the moment to put forward some impressive figures that underline more than ever the interest of such a movement.

Today, ORBi is:

• More than 153,000 scientific references from more than 9600 authors from the University of Liège
• More than 98,000 references with their text in full version
• More than 10,000 downloads per day
• More than 4 million downloads per year
• More than 50% of authors who deposit as soon as the paper is accepted
• References consulted in more than 180 countries worldwide
• Directory ranked 57th worldwide (out of 2,200 other types of directories)
• Directory ranked 2nd national
  
• A compliance rate (compliance with the mandate) of + 82%, which places ORBi as world leader at the level of compliance with the mandate.
• A multiplication of the number of quotations by 2

These numbers are growing every year, demonstrating the value of adherence to this type of movement that allows, more than ever, researchers to make their research results accessible and visible to a larger audience.

Contact

ORBi - Open and Repository Bibliography
orbi@ULiege.be