'Canadian excellence' strengthened by extensive adoption of open access

BioMed Central and Wilfrid Laurier University today announce the launch of Laurier IR, an institutional repository that provides a visible point of open access archiving of intellectual output for all members of the University community.

Built on BioMed Central's "Open Repository" system and using BioMed Central's extensive open access knowledge and technology experience, Laurier IR is a personalized in-house repository that will significantly increase access to the university's scholarly information and also highlight the talent of the Universities researchers and students.

Laurier University is just one many organizations globally that have adopted Open Repository since its inception. Open Repository is built upon DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing and preserving scholarly material.

In addition, the University's Supporter Membership with BioMed Central reduces the barriers for Laurier researchers publishing in BioMed Central's open-access journals by providing researchers with a 15 percent discount on the article processing charges.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) now requires authors to publish research results into open access journals and also encourages dual submission into an institutional repository. Complying with this mandate and also heeding wider position statements from bodies such as the Canadian Library Association (CLA) necessitated Wilfrid Laurier University to establish Laurier IR.

Laurier IR embraces the 'open access' movement by allowing authors to submit their original research directly to the repository. Electronic documents, including articles, pre-prints, monographs, reports, movies and databases can all be archived in the repository.

The service ensures that Laurier's scholarly communication output is consolidated, thus enabling researchers to broaden their knowledge base through greater collaboration and also providing a central point to store teaching support materials across the Laurier community.

Laurier University aims to build a full community structure for their repository within the next 12 months which will include customized designs and collections for particular groups of researchers. They also hope to implement a 'content recruitment strategy' to ensure that as much scholarly output from the university as possible is held with the repository.

Speaking of the continued development of Laurier IR said "Laurier is excited to be developing an institutional repository" said Dr. Deborah MacLatchy, Vice-President: Academic and Provost at Laurier. "It will be an excellent way for other scholars, as well as students and professionals, to access scholarly and creative works and theses published by Laurier faculty and students. It increases Laurier's presence internationally and extends our scholarly output to a much wider audience, such as researchers in the developing world."

Source: BioMed Central