Press release: Zurich Open Repository and Archive goes live using Open Repository service

[<Grace@biomedcentral.com>]

Press release: 27 November 2006

Zurich Open Repository and Archive goes live using Open 
Repository service

University of Zurich has launched ZORA (Zurich Open Repository 
and Archive) using BioMed Central's Open Repository service. ZORA 
is freely available online at www.zora.unizh.ch. The University 
of Zurich is the largest university in Switzerland. Over 4000 
staff and 24,000 students work across 160 institutes, departments 
and clinics.

Open access repositories are fast becoming a must-have for 
institutions, allowing staff and students to share research 
findings effectively. The global directory of academic open 
access repositories, OpenDOAR, launched last month with over 800 
entries.

Institutional open access repositories also allow researchers to 
meet the conditions of funding bodies with an open access 
mandate. Six research funders now mandate open access to work 
they have funded, and many more mandates are under consideration. 
The University of Zurich also has an open access near-mandate, 
expecting that researchers deposit a copy of all their published 
and refereed articles in ZORA, subject to copyright restrictions.

The university is the sixth institution to launch a repository 
using BioMed Central's Open Repository service. Open Repository 
provides institutions with a hassle-free hosted solution to get 
repositories up and running quickly. The service adds unique, 
value-added features to the open-source DSpace technology 
platform. Zurich, like all other customers, maintains complete 
administrative control over the repository whilst BioMed Central 
provides ongoing hosting services, personalization, backups and 
technical support.

Ingeborg Zimmermann, Head of Research Library Irchel and Project 
Manager, explains why Zurich chose BioMed Central's Open 
Repository service, "Open Repository allowed for a jump-start of 
our institutional repository, while keeping the mid-term option 
of moving all content to Zurich and running the repository 
in-house. Being a university with a large output in biomedical 
research, the submission of content using PubMed ID and thus 
enabling automatic metadata transfer was a great help in reaching 
our first goal of 1000 publications."

Ingeborg Zimmerman recently shared Zurich's experience of 
outsourcing its repository development to Open Repository at the 
Open Scholarship 2006 meeting in Glasgow.

Value-added features of the Open Repository in addition to the 
standard DSpace functionality can include a submission form using 
PubMed ID and external linking to Entrez databases. BioMed 
Central can also offer Open Repositories in different (Roman 
alphabet) languages, and customisable submission forms. The 
service is now W3 web accessibility compliant A.

Open Repository offers a Pilot Repository set up scheme, allowing 
customers to have working demo sites personalised to their needs 
for a 3-month, no obligation, free trial.

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Press contacts:

Grace Baynes for BioMed Central: press@biomedcentral.com or +44 
(0) 20 7631 9988

Christian Fuhrer, University of Zurich, Open Access Coordinator, 
oai@hbz.unizh.ch

Sales Contact:

For more information about the Open Repository service, or to 
discuss setting up a Pilot Repository, please contact Marianne 
Josserand: info@openrepository.com or +44 (0) 20 7631 9990

About Open Repository (www.openrepository.com/)

Open Repository is a service provided by BioMed Central for 
institutions and research organisations. Open Repository offers 
professional help to institutions to quickly and easily build, 
launch, maintain, and populate their own repositories. The 
service has been designed to be flexible and cost-effective. 
BioMed Central's economy of scale makes it possible for 
institutions that could not otherwise afford to, or lack the 
infrastructure or technical capacity in-house, to set up 
repositories.

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