ORBi provides services, not only to various departments within the University of Liège, but also to external institutions and organisations.
ORBilu, the "sister" version of ORBi, is the result of a partnership between ULiège and UniLu that began in 2012.
The result of several months of work by the respective Library Directors, this transnational event proved a challenge but also an opportunity for the development of Open Access documents.
The Luxembourg counterpart of ORBi, ORBilu, was born in 2013, accompanied by a mandate based on the ULiège model, leading to the increased visibility of their research and the promotion of a policy focused on open access.
Since 2014, ORBilu has been the official reference source for the generation of publication lists at the University of Luxembourg (activity reports, evaluation files, curriculum vitae).
The 4th May 2021, the University of Mons also embarked on the ORBi adventure!
The University of Mons has had its own institutional database since 2011, and a mandatory submission policy since 2012. However, faced with certain limitations of the tool, the UMons expressed a wish to see it evolve to better meet the needs of the Institution and its researchers by recommending a complete interface for referencing and highlighting the publications of the University and its research. It was in this context and because of its expertise in open access and the development of the ORBi institutional archive that the University of Liège was contacted.
ORBi includes a related journal database with a large number of descriptions of scientific journals. This database, which is updated regularly, is also used by:
ORBi provides data on a daily basis to the ULiège institutional data warehouse managed by the Data Collection and Analysis and Strategic Information Service (RADIUS). The data concerns all the contents of the database and the bibliometric information.
Since 2010, the Service d'informations médico-économiques (Simé) has only used references submitted to ORBi to establish the annual report of the scientific publications of the authors of the CHU of Liège.
Since the strengthening of the institutional mandate in 2014, all internal evaluations (requests for appointment, promotion or credit allocation) have had to be made exclusively on the basis of publications filed on ORBi.
The ORBi widget is a tool that allows a list of publications to be added within a web page (research units, laboratories, researcher's blog...). This list is updated each time a modification is made or a new publication is uploaded to ORBi and its appearance can be customised (size of the frame, sorting order, number of references displayed...).
Michel Moutschen, ULiège's Vice-Rector of Research, initiated a project to enhance ORBi. Key aspects include exploring ULiège's scientific trends and analyzing knowledge gaps to inspire new research areas.
AIASHI, a research project at HEC ULiege, develops AI technologies for document analysis using NLP and ML. One tool they are creating is HTMOT, which tracks document topics over time to aid research and collaboration.
AIASHI will analyze 86,000 Open Access articles for ORBi's use. However, it will not initially cover citations, affiliations, or metadata.
ORBi and AIASHI will follow GDPR rules when using personal data for research, with the support of ULiege’s Data Protection Officer.