News

A very special year is about to end for Lib4RI: our 10-year anniversary. We look back on continued commitment to «excellent services for excellent research», many new resources for our researchers, exciting new services – such as our institutional repository DORA, new Open Access options, or our extensive training programs – and, in November, a live event to celebrate our anniversary.

We established a Gold Open Access fund for Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL, supporting researchers to pay APCs.

For the first time, we released our newsletter «Lib4RI Update» in a digital format in 2019.

Writing a paper can sometimes lead to confrontations! Luckily, our librarians have the right tools to help you out. We launched the new Plagiarism Check Service in 2018.

Unfortunately, we cannot read a user’s mind. This is why we did a user survey in 2017. In principle, the values achieved were excellent. Nevertheless, the survey also shows which library services could be improved. For example, the media offering is rated more positively than discoverability and access to information. The planned web relaunch will certainly improve this.

In 2016, we launched the repositories DORA Eawag and DORA Empa. Already filled with published versions they were also prepared for Accepted Versions and thus ready for the green road of Open Access. As of today, we achieve an Open Access ratio of more than 70 % for new journal articles.

The library’s strategy aimed to complement traditional services with new ones. In addition to sourcing information from outside, in 2015 we set a new focus on supporting researchers in their publication process and on increasing the visibility of their publications. One first big step was the establishment of the new group – Publication Services. Lib4RI was ready for the future!

Cost neutrality has always been one of Lib4RI’s prime directives. As we act responsibly with the money of the four research institutes, we sometimes act drastically: In 2014, we had to cancel almost all subscriptions for a big American Society publisher. Just for one year – and we got a better price afterwards.

We provided our first half-day training courses in 2013, covering several topics like Searching, Open Access and EndNote. Based on the positive feedback of the participants we expanded our course repertoire – with increasing numbers of participants.

From the very beginning, we have optimised access to electronic resources for our researchers. With success! Our acquisitions are largely based on statistics and comprehensive analytics. Especially for books, we can use the so-called evidence based model. With this model, you have access to a large collection, but we only have to purchase the most used titles.

For our 10-year anniversary, we produced 10 short films presenting important milestones and services established by our library. Inspired by film classics/genres we added our personal touch in a parodic way. For the next ten days, we’ll have a daily surprise film for you to watch. Enjoy!

Since January 2021, researchers at Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL are able to publish Open Access articles free of charge in hybrid OA journals published by Springer. The agreement covers the article processing charges (APCs) for a fixed number of articles per year. This article quota is now exhausted for 2021. For all articles accepted until the end of 2021 fees for Open Access will no longer be covered by the Open Access agreement with Springer.

Last Wednesday Martins Zaumanis (Empa), presented his secrets on efficient scientific writing, based on his latest book Write an Impactful Research Paper.

The Lib4RI Open Access fund supports authors at Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL who wish to publish in fully Open Access (OA) journals and who are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The OA fund was first introduced in 2009 for researchers at Eawag and Empa and was extended in 2021 to also support researchers at PSI and WSL. So far, more than 300 articles have been funded.

10 years. Four research institutes. One library. Let's celebrate our anniversary together!

On the occasion of Lib4RI’s 10th anniversary, we are happy to present Martins Zaumanis (Empa) as our guest speaker.

Join our team! We offer an exciting position as project manager at Lib4RI.

As part of our 10-year anniversary and on the occasion of the International Open Access Week, we are very much looking forward to meeting you at one of our Pop-Up Libraries setup at Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL within the next two weeks.

Our biannual training modules on Searching & Managing Scientific Information usually offered to all affiliates of Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL will once again be replaced by a webinar miniseries (via Zoom) covering selected topics. Let’s hope the situation will have eased next spring so we can resume our full set of training modules.

At the end of August, the new “Sprint” unit was opened at NEST, the research and innovation platform of Empa and Eawag. The unit with office space was largely built with recycled components and materials. Two walls consist of periodical volumes and books that have been discarded by Lib4RI at Forum Chriesbach in the course of digitalisation.

Since January 2021, researchers at Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL are able to publish Open Access articles free of charge in full and hybrid OA journals published by Taylor & Francis. The agreement covers the article processing charges (APCs) for a fixed number of articles per year. This article quota is now exhausted for 2021. For all articles accepted until the end of 2021 fees for Open Access will no longer be covered by the Open Access agreement with Taylor & Francis.

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) offers a new way to manage your publications from submission to Open Access (OA) and reporting: ChronosHub

Total Materia is a comprehensive materials database. The database provides more than 20 million records for over 450.000 metallic and non-metallic materials: from chemical compositions, international cross-reference tables, physical and mechanical properties to additional information such as heat treatment diagrams and more. For more information read their brochure.

A milestone year has arrived! This year we are celebrating our 10-year anniversary. 10 years since the libraries of the four Swiss federal research institutes Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL merged. 10 years of commitment to «excellent services for excellent research». 10 years Lib4RI.

Scientists of Eawag, Empa, PSI & WSL can now publish Open Access articles free of charge in most of Wiley’s subscription journals. The option to publish Open Access applies to all research and review articles accepted for publication on or after May 1, 2021. The prerequisite for this is an affiliation of the corresponding author with Eawag, Empa, PSI or WSL.

IEEE offers a 1.5-hour webinar on IEEE authorship and Open Access on 21 and 22 April 2021. This webinar will cover topics like increasing your chance to get published, the reviewing process, IEEE Xplore Digital Library and authorship tools. In addition, the IEEE journal submission process and the IEEE Open Access options will be explained in detail. Click here for more information and for registration to this free webinar.

Corona is still omnipresent and our biannual training modules on Searching & Managing Scientific Information usually offered to all affiliates of Eawag, Empa, PSI and WSL will once more be replaced by a webinar miniseries (via Zoom) covering some selected topics. We hope to be back with a full set of training modules by autumn.

Join our team! We offer an exciting position as a group leader at Lib4RI.

As of today the number of views and downloads of your publications in DORA are available for you. Just click on the detailed page of your publication and look at the numbers on the right side under “Statistics”. For example, the article below has been viewed 837 times and the full text has been downloaded 797 times.

We are thrilled to announce our new PressReader subscription. You now have unlimited access to thousands of local and international newspapers and magazines. To be precise, PressReader boosts more than 7’000 of the world’s top newspapers and magazines from 120 countries in 60 languages as soon as they are available on shelves. If you would like to read a paper or magazine in another language, simply use the translate option.

This year, there are new possibilities for you to publish Open Access (OA): New deals with publishers allow you to publish OA free of charge and our new OA Fund helps you cover fees for articles in pure OA journals. We also offer on-demand workshops and a webinar explaining what OA is and how you can benefit from it.

We’ve added hundreds of new journals and thousands of new e-books to our portfolio. At the same time, we’ve cancelled just a handful of products – mainly due to low usage. Here are the most important changes in 2021.

Wondering how to make the most of DORA? We now offer you short online tutorials to help you through the process. Visit our vimeo channel to see our first tutorial on creating publication lists of a specific author in DORA and embedding this in your institutional website. You can find these videos on our Lib4RI

For our 10-year anniversary, we’re participating in this year’s SOLA-relay!

The Lib4RI team wishes you all a happy new year!