"At conferences and other events I now provide the direct link to my ORBi^lu page which is easier than sending emails around with the requested papers. I got very positive feedback so far on the system from fellow researchers."

Starting today, ORBi^lu, the University of Luxembourg’s new publications server, is the place to go to deposit all your scientific publications, from peer-reviewed journal articles and papers from conference proceedings to book chapters, contributions to collective works, oral presentations given at scientific conferences, and more.

What’s in it for me? Visibility, accessibility and impact.

• Visibility: by entering the details of your publications, and thanks to indexing by Internet search engines, your research will be visible to other scholars in your field. Wouldn’t it be great to go to Google Scholar, Scirus, etc. and find references to your work?
• Accessibility: by including the full-text of your publication, your work isn’t locked away behind a pay wall. Anyone, anywhere can read it.
• Impact: if your work is being read, then it is more likely to be cited. Isn’t the main problem with impact the fact that your article or book chapter can’t be found or accessed?

Why ORBi^lu? In a word, to promote your research. ORBi^lu is designed to make your research visible to the outside world.

How do you connect? Simply go to orbilu.uni.lu and login with your Uni.lu userid (xxxx.xxxx@uni.lux) and password. All your publications from the previous system have been transferred to ORBi^lu. Simply validate them and they will be visible to everyone.

Need training? Sign up for one of our training sessions.

Questions? Need help? Drop us an e-mail on orbilu@uni.lu.

ORBi^lu: Be seen. Be read. Be cited.

Today, the University of Luxembourg has joined the growing number of Universities and funding institutions around the world in launching a mandate for deposit in their new Open Access digital repository, ORBi^lu.

Who else is doing this? In addition to our partner, the University of Liège, Harvard, MIT, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, Ghent University, University of Minho, and Queensland University of Technology to name just a few. The European Commission has clearly stated its intent to mandate Open Access of publications for the research it funds in its Horizon 2020 programme. As well, earlier this year, the Obama Administration announced that Federal agencies spending more than $100M in Research & Development must make the results of the research they fund freely available within 12 months of publication.

Although the list (see roarmap.eprints.org) is long and varied, there are still many more institutions around the world to join in the movement and many discussions to that end are on-going. For example, Germany is currently studying a revision to its copyright law that will allow authors to make their scientific publications legally available via Open Access after a 12 month embargo period regardless of their publisher agreements.

Concretely, the University of Luxembourg requires all University members to deposit:

1. full-text electronic copies of all peer-reviewed articles and papers from published conference proceedings published from 1 January 2009 onwards; and
2. bibliographic references of all their scientific production published since 1 January 2009.

For the full mandate text, click here. We’ve also put together a FAQ to help answer your questions.

And please, feel free to contact us on orbilu@uni.lu if you have any questions.

ORBi^lu: Be seen. Be read. Be cited.