Yesterday, Klaus Graf reacted rather strongly to the announcement of the Liège University repository
mandate, stating that its practice and legal framework is nonsense. It seems to me that perhaps he
may have missed a few essential aspects of this mandate, essentially the way it is handled in practice,
the legal whereabouts and the reasons for imposing it.
Here below is the English translation of the message I have sent to the whole University Community
on November 26, 2008. I believe that, rather than a lengthy explanation of how the Liège mandate
works, this message tells it all much better.
It can perhaps be useful as well for those who wish to find a way to obtain compliance within their
universities.
It demonstrates also that the Liège Mandate is indeed IDOA/DDR (Immediate-Deposit/Optional-
Access -- Dual Deposit/Relase), to use the latest definitions coined in this forum.
Happy New Year to all !
Bernard Rentier
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"Madame, Monsieur, Cher(e) Collègue,
The increase in international visibility of the ULg [Université de Liège] and its researchers, mainly
through their publications, as well as the support for the worldwide development of an open and free
access to scientific works (Open Access) are two essential objectives at the heart of my action, as you
probably know.
At my requst, the Institutional Repository "ORBi" (Open Repository & Bibliography;
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be ) has been set up at the ULg by the Libraries Network to meet these objectives.
[1] The experimental encoding phase based on volunteerism being now successfully completed, we
can step forward and enter the "production phase" this wednesday November 26th, 2008. I take this
opportunity to thank all the professors and researchers who have already filed in ORBi hundreds of
their references, 70% of them with the full text. Thanks to their patience, ORBi's fine tuning could be
achieved.
From today on, it is incumbent upon each ULg member to feed ORBi with his/her own references. In
this respect, the Administrative Board of the University has decided to make it mandatory for all ULg
members:
- to deposit the bibliographic references of ALL their publications since 2002;
- to deposit the integral text of ALL their articles published in periodicals since 2002. Access to these
full texts will only be granted with the author's consent and according to the rules applicable to
author's rights and copyrights. The University is indeed very keen on respecting the rights of all
stakeholders.
[2] For future publications, deposit in ORBi will be mandatory as soon as the article is accepted by the
editor.
[3] I wish to remind you that, as announced a year in March 2007, starting October 1st, 2009 only
those references introduced in ORBi will be taken into consideration as the official list of publications
accompanying any curriculum vitæ in all evaluation procedures 'in house' (designations, promotions,
grant applications, etc.).
Information seminars have been planned during the next months to allow every one of you to make
the tool your own thing (see
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/news?id=06). Help is also accessible on line; such
as the simplified user's guide (also available as a leaflet) and the Depositor's Guide.
The development of ORBi offers multiple advantages not only to the Institution, but also to the
researchers and their teams, such as:
- a considerable speeding up of the dissemination and visibility of the scientific works (as soon as
publication approval is granted;
- a considerable increase in visibility for the published works through referencing in the main search
engines (Googlescholar, OAI metaengines, etc.);
- centralised and perennial conservation of publications allowing multiple exploitation possibilities
(integration in personal web pages, in institutional web pages, export of reference lists towards other
applications and to funding organisations such as the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research);
- etc.
I hope that, despite the time you are going to devote to this somewhat tedious task, you will soon
realise the benefits of this institutional policy.
With many thanks,
Bernard Rentier
Recteur"
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Received on Sat Jan 03 2009 - 15:23:20 GMT