The year 2025 marked a key milestone for ORBi as it adapted to the requirements of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation’s Open Access Decree. As a reminder, only open-access references on ORBi will be included in publication reports used to evaluate our researchers, for all articles accepted for publication or published since 2018 (the decree’s effective date).
This gradual transition is spread over seven phases, from September 2025 to June 2028, and currently applies to articles published since 2023.
We are already seeing significant progress: nearly 82% of scientific articles from 2025 are deposited as Open Access.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to our researchers for this essential collective effort.
The ORBi team remains at your disposal to support you through this transition.
View the FAQ on the Open Access Decree
Artificial intelligence is constantly evolving and becoming an increasingly integral part of our daily lives, exponentially impacting our online environment.
Like other institutional repositories around the world, ORBi is facing a massive increase in traffic generated by AI bots, which are more intrusive than those used by search engines or traditional indexing tools.
These requests can cause slowdowns, service disruptions, and affect viewing and download statistics. Blocking measures have already been implemented, and longer-term solutions are under consideration.
Our priority remains clear: to protect our resources and our authors, while maintaining the visibility of their research outputs.
* AI bot activity has a partial impact on these statistics.
Since the rollout of version 2.0, ORBi has continued to evolve to meet the needs of the academic community.
In 2025, 8 release notes were published, out of the 62 released since 2022.
ORBi also provides daily support: more than 500 support tickets requesting help or information were processed in 2025.
In addition to email support, researchers can schedule an appointment with the ORBi team to ask questions, either via Teams or in person.
The year 2025 also saw the launch of PeriScops, a platform funded and coordinated by the FNRS.
Its goal: to provide a single point of access to all scientific publications from the institutional repositories of the universities in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.
The platform automatically harvests data from the five participating universities every day. It was developed by ULiège Library, which was selected through a public call for proposals for its recognized expertise in managing scientific repositories.
Meanwhile, collaborations with the University of Mons and the University of Luxembourg are actively continuing around ORBiMons and ORBiLu.
Open Access offers authors immense visibility without necessarily entailing high costs. Many high-quality journals now offer open-access publication with little or no publication fees.
Conversely, hybrid journals—which combine subscription fees with publication charges—or “unfair gold” journals with ex publication fees (the two models most common among major publishers) represent a very significant and often unnecessary cost for institutions and researchers.
ULiège remains fully committed to fair and sustainable Open Access, allowing our researchers’ work to shine while preserving funding for their departments and laboratories!
ULiège is organizing the fourth Open Science Day on Thursday, November 12, 2026. In this context, the Open Science Steering Committee, in collaboration with ULiège Library and RISE, is issuing a call for contributions!
These four new books are available for free in their entirety in several formats (HTML, PDF, ePub). You can also obtain print copies through a partnership with Presses Universitaires.
Alain Schuhl, Deputy Director General for Science (DGDS) at the CNRS, warns of the risks associated with this practice and advises his researchers not to accept payment.
