Research Repository opens VU research to the world

VU Research Repository reaches a milestone: 20,000 items accessible worldwide.
Thursday 28 September 2017

To mark International Open Access Week (23-29 October 2017), VU Research Repository celebrates a milestone with over 20,000 VU research materials made accessible worldwide to view, download and cite.

VU Research Repository is an open access repository showcasing the research and scholarly outputs of VU staff and higher degree research students. It is indexed by search engines such as Google and Trove to increase discoverability and opportunities for citation. Having research material available in an open access repository such as VU Research Repository can increase the chance of citation by 19%, according to a study on open access citation.

What’s in the Research Repository

VU's Research Repository houses:

  • refereed scholarly and research journal articles (most cited article: The tetratricopeptide repeat: A structural motif mediating protein-protein interactions)
  • conference papers
  • books and book chapters
  • theses by VU students (most downloaded thesis: An action research study of pronunciation training, language learning strategies and speaking confidence)
  • university related research material, such as working papers, reports, discussion papers, etc.
  • scholarly journals and literature published by the University
  • selected material from the Library’s Special Collections such as the Crow Papers, Foley Collection and McLaren Papers.

Benefits of the Research Repository

Benefits of VU's Research Reposity include:

  • increasing access to knowledge
  • raising research visibility
  • facilitating collaboration
  • meeting recommendations of funding bodies, including ARC and NHMRC, for the deposit of research publications in an institutional or subject-based repository.

To celebrate the milestone, here’s a snapshot of VU Research Repository.

Worldwide research access

VU research generates interest worldwide, with the greatest number of downloads from:

  • United States
  • Australia
  • United Kingdom
  • India
  • France.

For a complete list of countries where VU research has been downloaded, see research repository statistics overview. VU researchers can also track and review the number of times their papers are viewed and downloaded if they deposit full-text items to the repository.

VU staff - how to make your research open

  • VU research staff can deposit their research publication via the research publication system called Elements, by clicking on the deposit icon.
  • Higher degree research students can submit their thesis as part of the Graduate Research Centre thesis deposit process.

For more information, see submitting a paper. For assistance, see Library research support for contact details for your college librarian, the research librarian or the Research Repository team.