The decision fits into the TU/e policy concerning open access. Peter van Dam, the Board’s spokesman, says TU/e attaches great value to the best possible accessibility to all publications. “All articles by scholars must be retrievable via their personal pages. Links must lead to full-text articles. Wherever articles are not publicly available, references to the publishers are provided.”

A full overview of all articles is thus achieved, says drs. Leon Osinski, a staff member of the Information Expertise Center (IEC, into which the university library has been incorporated). “A large portion of articles has already been uploaded into the system, most university Departments do this quite consistently.” Articles in Metis are automatically included in the TU/e repository, and are subsequently displayed on researchers' personal pages. The articles may also be retrieved via Google Scholar and NARCIS, the Dutch academic portal.

The IEC will take care that uploading articles will cause as little trouble as possible to publishing authors. “We must fit the process into researchers’ regular workflow, whereby articles will be submitted to us automatically. If this does not happen, we can still request publications ourselves. We may do this now that the submission of publications has become obligatory”, says Osinski.

Metis is used not only for the storage of articles. The system also includes data on ongoing research projects and the scientists involved with them. Metis is therefore also an important source of information, e.g. for visitation committees. (TJ)/.

For further information on Metis see:
http://w3.tue.nl/en/services/library/digilib/publications_from_tue/metis/