XClose

UCL News

Menu

Portal to bring together Europe's top economics research

16 July 2007

Leading economics libraries, including UCL Library Services, have won a €2 million bid to create a subject-based repository.

Dome The project, called Network of European Economists Online (NEEO), will address the lack of integration of academic output because of the way information is currently dispersed.

NEEO is an initiative of the Nereus consortium of academic libraries. The members of the consortium, including many of the top 20 European academic economics institutions, together with other leading European economics research institutes, will create a networked service providing open access to economics information, showcasing Europe's leading research results.

Professor Dave Delpy, UCL Vice-Provost (Research), said: "The news that UCL is a key player in this €2 million funding package to create the premier open access economics research portal in Europe is very exciting. Open access to research outputs is an important part of research funders' agendas. The greater visibility which this new portal will deliver is good for UCL researchers and good for research. I am glad that UCL is a member of the Nereus consortium and we look forward to making a full contribution to the project."

Dr Paul Ayris, Director of UCL Library Services, said: "The award of this grant is fantastic news. It shows that the European Commission is interested in opening up European research to as wide an audience as possible. Open access to the research output of UCL economists will make our research freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world with a connection to the Internet. This gives a new meaning to the phrase 'UCL - London's Global University'."

Based on the content of the institutional repositories of the partners, NEEO will provide:

  • integrated academic output, including, journal articles, working papers, chapters, conference proceedings and datasets
  • a central multilingual portal and full-text search service with links to the full-text research publications and primary data output
  • more comprehensive access to the life's work of 500 leading researchers
  • access to the current research results of leading institutions in the area of economics
  • primary datasets with links to the publications based upon them.

This will be complemented with other content from around the world to create a new portal of open access economics information. NEEO content will also appear in specialist information retrieval services.

Hans Geleijnse, Director of Library and IT Services at Tilburg University, and Director of the NEEO project, said: "We are very pleased with the support the European Commission is giving to this project. It confirms the interest of the EC in institutional repositories, open access and increasing the visibility of European research. It is encouraging that so many prominent institutions will collaborate in this area." Tilburg University will lead the project on behalf of the Nereus Consortium.

The project will begin in September 2007.

To find out more, use the links at the bottom of this article.