[BOAI] Ireland's National Portal for Open Access to Research Goes Live

[Rachel Hill]

*** Apologies for cross-posting ***


    **Ireland's National Portal for Open Access to Research Goes Live **

Ireland's new national portal for Open Access to Irish published 
research will go live today. RIAN - http://www.rian.ie- will act as a 
single point of access to national research output, and contains content 
harvested from the institutional repositories of the seven Irish 
Universities and Dublin Institute of Technology. RIAN will significantly 
increase the visibility and impact of Irish research and will expand to 
harvest content from other Irish Open Access providers as the service 
develops.

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 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 funding and high quality staff.

The development of RIAN was managed by the Irish Universities 
Association Librarians' Group and is supported by the Association. This 
three year project 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 for the Initiative from the heads of the 7 Irish universities:*

/"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.

/"Research at NUI Maynooth has achieved world-class standing in many 
areas. 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

/"The development of an institutional repository to demonstrate our 
research activity and achievement is a central element of Trinity's 
research support infrastructure. [RIAN] 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*. *

*Ends*

*For more information contact:*

Paul Sheehan, Director of Library Services, Dublin City University

Telephone: (+353 1) 7005211, Email: paul.sheehan at dcu.ie 
<mailto:paul.sheehan at dcu.ie>

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