IRELAND LAUNCHES NATIONAL PORTAL FOR OPEN ACCESS TO RESEARCH

IRELAND LAUNCHES NATIONAL PORTAL FOR OPEN ACCESS TO RESEARCH

RIAN - OPEN ACCESS TO IRISH PUBLISHED RESEARCH

Date of release 8 June, 2010

We are pleased to announce the launch of RIAN, Ireland’s new national portal for Open Access to Irish published research.

RIAN is the outcome of a project to build online open access to institutional repositories in all seven Irish universities and to harvest their content to the national portal.  RIAN will significantly increase the visibility and impact of Irish research.

RIAN will act as a single point of access to national research output, and will initially contain content harvested from individual university institutional repositories and that of the Dublin Institute of Technology. The Portal will expand to harvest content from other Irish Open Access providers as the service develops.

The Irish Government has identified growth in research as critical to its future as a knowledge economy. Raising the research profile is a key strategy in the Universities strategic plans, and the ability to showcase research output and identify institutional research strengths is extremely important in attracting new investment and high quality staff.

A national network of institutional repositories will increase the exposure of national research output, and allows services, such as enhanced searching, and statistics generation, to be developed using economies of scale. RIAN will demonstrate the impact of research to potential funders, who recognise the value of wider research dissemination.

The project was managed by the Irish Universities Association Librarians' Group and is supported by the Association. The project, running from April 2007 to May 2010, was equally funded by the Universities and the Irish Government’s Strategic Innovation Fund which is administered by the Higher Education Authority.

Benefits of RIAN to Irish authors:

    * Broadens worldwide access to material

    * Increases citations for research material

    * Makes easier access to material via search engines such as Google,    Google Scholar and Yahoo

    * Raises profile of Irish researchers internationally

Benefits to Irish institutions include:

    * Provides a showcase of the institution’s research output

    * Raises the profile of the institution’s research internationally through broader access and citations

    * Increases potential for collaboration and synthesis between Irish and international researchers

Support from Irish universities:

“The development of an institutional repository to demonstrate our research activity and achievement is a central element of Trinity’s research support infrastructure. TARA  will also play a vital role in communicating the strength of Irish research to a global audience, in attracting the highest quality of research to Ireland and in enabling valuable links with industrial partners.”

Dr. John Hegarty, Provost, Trinity College Dublin.

“UCD welcomes the development of global access to Irish university research outputs which will contribute to the social, economic and cultural objectives of a knowledge society."

Dr. Hugh Brady, President UCD

"It is in the national interest to extend access to Irish research output at institutional and sectoral level so as to maximise the long-term strategic impact and thereby help develop a knowledge society."

Professor Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, President, DCU

"The National Research Portal will increase the international profile of individual researchers and of Irish Universities and will thereby enhance the national research endeavour".

Professor Don Barry, President, University of Limerick.

“This initiative will provide a world-wide gateway to that research and build on our own institutional repository for publications.”

Professor John Hughes, President, National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

“University College Cork’s institutional repository has the potential to transform the dissemination of our scholarly output and will be the point of access for these resources for future generations.”

Dr. Michael Murphy, President, University College Cork.

 “The project provides an international window on Irish Research output and NUI Galway is delighted to be part of this.”

Dr James J. Browne, Uachtarán – President, National University of Ireland, Galway