Open Research Library




Your central hosting platform for Open Access Books

The Open Research Library (ORL) is planned to include all Open Access book content worldwide on one platform for user-friendly discovery, offering a seamless experience navigating more than 14,000 Open Access books. This vital infrastructure is slated to comprise the most comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed Open Access books accessible for everyone. Libraries investing in the Open Research Library contribute to the development of a dedicated infrastructure for the global research community, while participating libraries have the opportunity to benefit from a set of exclusive services.

Why Invest in the Open Research Library?

Vital Infrastructure
Pricing & Benefits
Development Roadmap
Vital Infrastructure

The Open Research Library shall serve as a vital infrastructure for the needs of the scholarly community amongst others, promoting Open Access to scholarly works. With the support of libraries and research institutions worldwide, the Open Research Library will be able to develop its infrastructure benefitting everyone.

Combining all Open Access book content in one place, for easy discovery and user-friendly navigation as well as further dissemination into third party systems.

Future development roadmap to be decided upon by a high profile board of publishers and librarians.

Pricing & Benefits

Open Research Library Basic Membership

 

Individualized COUNTER 5 usage statistics

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Listed as a supporter of the Open Research Library

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Contribute to the development roadmap of the Open Research Library

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Pricing: $1,120 // €1,000 // £880 per annum for a three-year period

 


Open Research Library Premium Membership

 

Individualized COUNTER 5 usage statistics

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Branded Library Microsite

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Admin features to customize content display

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MARC record delivery

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Contribute to the development roadmap

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Listed as a supporter of the Open Research Library

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Pricing: $2,240 // €2,000 // £1,760 per annum for a three-year period

Development Roadmap

Development Roadmap

 

Full-text searching across the entire database (beyond the metadata allowing to search within any given book)

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Download format choice for a given title (PDF or ePub)

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Expanded metadata elements in the user interface (FundRef, NERD, etc.)

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Enhanced metadata, improving metadata supplied by publisher

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Support for annotation

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Comprehensive coverage of other OA content (journals, video, poster, audio, etc.)



Learn More About the Open Research Library



The Open Research Library (ORL) makes metadata feeds openly available for third parties. Next to this, MARC records are freely available on the platform.

Users can browse and search for Open Access books from various publishers and providers, currently including all Knowledge Unlatched books, and with many more books and curations to follow during the coming months. The further development roadmap will be shaped through the input of a high profile board of publishers and librarians.

The Open Research Library is now live and can be accessed here: https://openresearchlibrary.org
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Browse and search
Apply various filters and views across the entire Library

Curated Collections
Find Open Acces books curated by collection, publisher, provider and more

 

 


Premium Membership Services

Microbranded library site
Highlight faculty OA Books, curate collections, and more

Customize Content Displays
Display the most relevant collections for your users

 

 
 
 


Frequently Asked Questions

 
1What is the Open Research Library?
The Open Research Library (ORL) is an aggregation of peer-reviewed, Open Access, scholarly monographs which is hosted on the BiblioBoard platform. Hosting makes the user experience consistent across the collection and enables users to maintain a single bookshelf for all of their Open Access book content. For the library, it streamlines workflows and reduces customer service issues. It also provides a single point of contact, if issues do arise. The full ORL collection has become available for anyone to use beginning in 2020. It is our goal for the ORL collection to be comprehensive and provide readers and libraries a one-stop shop for Open Access book content. In addition to book content, the platform can also accommodate the hosting of video, poster and audio content. The ORL is now accessible for the general public and participating libraries.
2How is Open Research Library different from other OA platforms?
The Open Research Library is not designed to replace other Open Access (OA) platforms. Its goal is to give libraries and scholars more options for discovering and accessing OA content. KU has heard repeatedly from libraries and publishers that they would like a better user-experience for OA content, and the launch of the Open Research Library gives stakeholders a chance to invest in a solution that meets their needs. The product development will be driven by pledging institutions.
3What are some of the unique features of the Open Research Library platform?
One of the big differences between ORL and other OA platforms is that a user can create an account (without supplying any personal data) to enable bookmarking, note-taking and list making. It will also allow them to sync their activity across devices, including mobile app activity. Users can search across both the book titles and the full text of the collection with a simple keyword search and refine the results using facets, or they can perform targeted searches using the advanced search feature which includes the ability to search by subject, author, publisher, and language. The site uses responsive web design and works well regardless of the user’s screen size, while accommodating traffic from mobile devices. At present, users are also able to access the Open Research Library collection through the BiblioBoard mobile apps for Apple, Android and Kindle Fire devices. For people with limited access to internet, app access can be vital. The platform addresses the fact that digital book readers require more sophisticated technology to support their online needs than do those reading articles, who are generally happy to download a PDF and move on. As the most recent Affordable Georgia Survey concluded: “A surprising amount of open-ended responses focused on the efficacy of print versus digital resources, and this may indicate a need for not only a print option, but also more usable digital platforms and resources."

Libraries pledging at the premium level will also be able to take advantage of the features that customize the site. These include branding, creating custom collections and controlling the display of content on the homepage.

From the outset, the Open Research Library has been dedicated to Open Access scholarly monographs or collected volumes, but the BiblioBoard platform can also support article, image, audio and video files. Thus, there is an opportunity to expand the collection to incorporate a wide variety of Open Access content.
4How does the Open Research Library fit into library workflows?
We are working to make sure that it is simple for libraries to make the content in the Open Research Library discoverable to patrons. All libraries have access to MARC records, and the ORL metadata is also integrated into discovery service systems, including EBSCO’s EDS, Ex Libris' Primo, Summon and OCLC’s Knowledge Base. Because all of the content is hosted on our site, we can ensure links always work and there is one place for trouble-shooting when there is an access or metadata issue.

COUNTER 5 compliant institutional usage statistics are also available to supporting libraries.
5What if I am not interested in all of the content in the Open Research Library collection?
Libraries pledging at the premium level have the opportunity to refine the collection to better meet their needs via a library-branded microsite.
6How does the Open Research Library differ from BiblioBoard?
The Open Research Library is a hosted content collection on the BiblioBoard platform. Libraries and users can freely register and make use of all the content and the basic features available within the Open Research Library environment. For libraries and library consortia using the BiblioBoard platform for other purposes, such as, to host locally licensed content, these users will be able to navigate easily between BiblioBoard and the Open Research Library, but the collections are unique and not duplicative.
7Does the Open Research Library work with Learning Management Systems?
Today, we do not offer a specific LMS integration. However, all of the URLs in the Open Research Library are persistent, making it easy to link to specific items or collections from anywhere. Content files can also be downloaded and posted in the LMS without fear since all of the content in the Open Research Library is Open Access.
8Is there chapter level discovery and access?
Support for chapter level discovery and access is in development now and is planned to be implemented in the near future. However, chapter level access can only be available if the publisher provides chapter level files and metadata for the title. Usage reporting and downloading will be at the chapter level too.
9What about preservation?
At present, the workflows of the Open Research Library (ORL) do not include the storage of multiple copies of its content at external online or offline platforms. At the same time, different long-term content preservation options are being considered. Yet, as a hosting platform in its own right, the ORL routinely preserves both the original and processed versions of all of its content files. Should the need arise, different versions of its hosted content can be restored. Likewise, since Open Access licenses are not exclusive, external institutions, such as the Social Science Open Access Repository, can use the metadata feeds of the ORL to download specific collections or content items for storage at their systems.
10What about accessibility?
Currently, the platform meets WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards and many of the Level AA requirements. Our support team continuously works to improve the platform, as part of its full Level AA compliance with WCAG 2.0 standards.
11What are some longer-term platform development goals?
● Full-text searching across the collection (implemented) ● Enhanced annotation features (in progress) ● Multiple download format options for each title (in progress) ● Expanded metadata elements in the user interface (FundRef, NERD, etc.) (in progress) ● Usage statistics visual dashboard ● Metadata enrichment, improving publisher supplied metadata (ongoing) ● Comprehensive coverage of other OA content (journals, video, poster, audio, etc.) (ongoing)
 

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