https://doi.org/10.15255/KUI.2014.003
Published: Kem. Ind. 63 (7-8) (2014) 269−276
Paper reference number: KUI-03/2014
Paper type: Professional paper / From our Libraries
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FULIR – Full-text Institutional Repository of the Ruđer Bošković Institute

B. Macan

Abstract

Institutional repositories are online platforms for gathering, archiving, dissemination and long-term preservation of an institution’s scientific output. Archiving full-text papers into the institutional and other open access repositories (OAR) is one way of achieving open access to scientific information, the so-called “green” OA. In 2006 the idea of implementing an institutional repository at the Ruđer Bošković Institute Library was initiated and one year later, the project had started, parallel with the subproject of digitizing RBI’s documentary materials.4 Various open source solutions were tested, among which EPrints software was chosen as the most suitable to RBI’s needs. The first documents were archived in March 2011, and on October 18, 2012, the official version of the repository was published under the name Full-text Institutional Repository of the Ruđer Bošković Institute – FULIR. The goal of FULIR is to gather, archive, disseminate and preserve, for the long term, the whole scientific production and documentary materials of the Institute in digital form, as well as provide open access to archived materials where possible. It is possible to archive all kinds of materials in FULIR, such as articles published in journals, conference proceedings, books, book chapters, dissertations, but also various kinds of unpublished materials such as posters and presentations from conferences or lectures, reports, audio and video records and datasets. FULIR is based on the principle that the scientists themselves archive their materials, but in this initial phase, the librarians are also assisting the scientists in archiving new items. The repository allows different access rights to archived materials and a depositor may define to whom (all users/only registered users (RBI staff)/only repository administrators), and when (immediately or after a certain embargo period) full-texts of archived materials will be available. Repository administration is conducted by the librarians, who also provide a helpdesk service for scientists with depositing and copyright issues. On the depositing side of the repository, FULIR has implemented plugins for automatic checking of copyright issues for archiving articles published in journals by automatic searching of SHERPA/RoMEO database and displaying relevant information to users. There is also the possibility of importing records from other databases, such as arXive or PubMED through items ID’s. There are various search and browse possibilities available in FULIR for users, whereof a full-text search is worth mentioning. Statistical plugin (IRStats2 – Beta – version 0.0.4) is also implemented, as well as altmetric plugin (Altmetric – version 1.0.5). FULIR is fully compatible with OpenAIRE infrastructure and as such is the first OA repository in Croatia enabling RBI scientists to satisfy the conditions of European Commission for archiving full-texts of published papers financed under the Horizon 2020 program in OpenAIRE compatible OAR. Future plans for FULIR are related with further work on interoperability issues with the Croatian Scientific Bibliography – CROSBI, to enable pushing and pulling records from one system to another. There is also the need to educate the scientists about the advantages of OA and the importance of archiving fulltext documents into institutional repositories, as well as educating them about copyright issues. Helping other Croatian institutions in implementing their own OAR, possibly through centralized infrastructure on the national level is also one of forthcoming activities where experience gathered with FULIR will be of the utmost importance.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Keywords

open access repositories, institutional repositories, FULIR, open access, Ruđer Bošković Institute