OSKAR

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OSKAR Bordeaux, an open-access digital archiving platform for scientific publications by University of Bordeaux researchers, is gradually being deployed. Here's an update on this project promoting open science.

Photo : Scientific publications by Bordeaux researchers available in an open-access format © University of Bordeaux
Scientific publications by Bordeaux researchers available in an open-access format © University of Bordeaux

The Bordeaux campus institutions have joined forces to support the Open Science movement, and in particular to offer an alternative to the dominant commercial publishing models. This resulted in the creation of an open-access digital archiving platform for scientific publications by researchers, called Open Science & Knowledge Archive or OSKAR Bordeaux for short, which is currently being deployed and hosted by the University of Bordeaux.

OSKAR Bordeaux makes it possible to disseminate all the scientific output widely and to guarantee its safekeeping. Access to the platform's contents is open and free of charge. What's more, the open-access dissemination of the unabridged scientific publications makes them more visible, so they can be more widely read and hence more widely quoted.

The tool and the associated services are aimed at responding to the increasingly frequent obligation of open-access dissemination of articles when research is financed by public entities and agencies like the ANR.

OSKAR Bordeaux

This project was supported and funded by the University of Bordeaux within the framework of Initiative of Excellence no. ANR 10-IDEX-03-02.

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Thanks to its easy-to-use functionalities and its link with HAL, OSKAR Bordeaux is bound to become second nature for researchers archiving the unabridged text of their open-access publications. It will increase both visibility and promotion of the research results for the researchers and university alike.

Yves Ducq, mission leader for Open Science and Documentation

What is OSKAR Bordeaux?

OSKAR Bordeaux is an academic open-access repository with the role of making all the scientific output, published by researchers from an institute, accessible, openly and free of charge, to the entire international scientific community, in particular in emerging countries as well as to the general public. Scientific output may include publications in international journals (Science, Nature, etc.) as well as book chapters, conference proceedings or even theses.

The OSKAR platform can be searched by the main search engines (e.g. Google) and metacatalogues (DOAR, BASE, etc.). It is also interoperable with other repositories (ArXiv, Repec, etc.), and notably with the multidisciplinary open archive HAL. When a Bordeaux researcher submits his publication in OSKAR Bordeaux, it automatically appears in HAL.

 

Who can use OSKAR Bordeaux?

OSKAR Bordeaux is designed for providing access to the unabridged publications archived by the five higher education institutes on campus, namely the University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux Montaigne University, Sciences Po Bordeaux, Bordeaux Sciences Agro and Bordeaux INP as well as by the EPST (public scientific and technical research) partner institutes on campus (CNRS, INRAE, Inserm, Inria, etc.)

All the researchers in laboratories, joint research units (UMR), research units (UR), etc., affiliated with the five higher education institutes and the EPST partners and supervisory bodies are part of the scope concerned and can use OSKAR, in compliance with the policy of their affiliate institutes.

How does OSKAR Bordeaux work?

Project management was delegated to the Documentation department of the University of Bordeaux, with the support of the Information Systems department for technical expertise and tool integration. A working group was set up, including members of each of the campus institutions, to work on the project with the lecturer-researchers of the pilot research units in order to implement the appropriate technical solution. The project is monitored politically at the university by Yves Ducq and Karim Belabas, respectively in charge of Open Science and Documentation and the Vice-President for digital technologies.

OSKAR Bordeaux is based on the open-source software DSpace, with support from the company Atmire.

The OSKAR Bordeaux team is available to assist research units in implementing the open-access publication policy in compliance with the recommendations issued by the supervisory authorities and to answer any individual questions relating to open-access scientific publications.