ORBi^lu: Why?

Increasing the availability of full-text peer-reviewed research articles broadens dissemination, increases use and enhances professional visibility of your scholarly research which in turn can lead to increased citations and usage. ^[1][2]

ORBi^lu will facilitate an expansion in the development and distribution of your research on a global scale and a strengthening of the prestige and influence of your research by:

• Increasing visibility of your work providing an increased potential for citation;
• Making your work easily accessible to others on the web - your publications will be harvested by search engines such as Google Scholar, Scirus, etc. and therefore, will be available for easy discovery;
• Enabling more rapid communication between peers and make the development of expert networks easier;
• Opening up new potentials in terms of new readership;
• Preserving your scientific production, for the future, safe from loss or damage;
• Reducing your workload:
  • You can store all your publications in a single place accessible from anywhere;
  • ORBi^lu can feed into researcher profile web pages and lists and reports can be exported for various purposes (ex: curriculum vitae, requests for funding, etc.).
• Permitting you to maintain ownership of your work and who has access to it;
• Allowing you to give permanent direct links to your work and, for restricted access items, easily respond to requests for electronic copies;
• Providing you with usage statistics for your publications (for example: the number of views and downloads per month, country, etc.);
• Providing explicit evidence of documents having been subjected to a peer-review process;
• Allow you to actively participate in a fully expanding international movement which aims to enable you, researchers, to regain control of the distribution of your scientific production.

All these advantages require only a minimal effort on your part. ORBi^lu was effectively conceived to offer a powerful, quick and easy repository process, enhanced with automatic help tools and import and export possibilities. The depositor also benefits from, among other things, legal support in terms of copyright and repositories in Open Access.

Research journals are the source for cutting-edge knowledge in every field from history to medicine yet students, researchers, professors, and others are denied access because they or their institution can’t afford it.

Journals have become increasingly expensive to the point where your library cannot subscribe to everything that is relevant to your studies.

What’s the solution? Open Access. Open Access is free, immediate, online access to high-quality scholarly research coupled with unrestricted rights to use it in new and innovative ways.

How does ORBi^lu support Open Access and thus help you get access to the research you need? By providing:

• free and rapid access to scientific publications of high quality;
• a means of easily following the Institution's current academic research via:
  • RSS feed,
  • scanning by subject,
  • consulting general statistics,
  • listing the most recent documents registered in the directory on ORBi^lu’s homepage;
• access to a simple research interface, with the possibility of searching within the full text of the publication;
• the possibility of finding the Institution's publications without the need of an ORBi^lu site search, thanks to extensive referencing in search engines such as Google Scholar, OAIster, Scirus, etc.

To learn how you can help, go to Right to Research.

What does the Institution achieve when its authors make their scholarly publications available freely on the Internet?

• Increased visibility and presence on the Web;
• Increased impact for research;
• The open access collection in the repository forms a complete record of the research output of the institution in an easily accessible format. It provides the means for the institution to manage its research programmes more effectively and to measure and assess, if so desired, its research programmes;
• Open repositories publicise an institute’s research strengths, providing maximum return on research investment;
• Open repositories increase impact and usage of institute's research, providing new contacts and research partnerships for authors.

Furthermore, as an integrated and centralized management tool, ORBi^lu guarantees the long-term preservation of the Institution's research output:

• by the Institution taking over the management of references and full texts itself, researchers and their departments do not have to put in place their own distribution infrastructures, such as web pages, and also avoid having to assume the associated costs and technical maintenance;
• a guarantee of the long-term preservation of references and full texts and of their access, notably independent of the evolution of research equipment;
• a centralized reference tool, allowing everyone to follow the evolution of the Institution's research output.