About

ORA (Oxford University Research Archive) is the institutional repository for the University of Oxford. ORA was established in 2007 as a permanent and secure online archive of research materials produced by members of the University of Oxford.

ORA aims to provide access to the full text of as much of Oxford's academic research as possible. This includes articles, conference papers, theses, research data, working papers, posters and other content types.

Making materials open access removes barriers that restrict access to research, allowing for free dissemination of full text content, available to anyone with Internet access. ORA promotes and encourages the sharing of the scholarly output produced by the members of the University of Oxford that have been published under open access conditions, whilst additionally supporting University compliance with research funder policy and assessment.

More information regarding open access at the University of Oxford can be found on the Open Access Oxford website.

Benefits of the ORA Service

ORA actively makes details of its content available to services such as the Bodleian Libraries catalogue - SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online), the British Library's EThOS service, Google, and Google Scholar, with the intent to maximise visibility of information regarding publications at Oxford with the widest possible audience. ORA offers an API (Application Programming Interface) in which other services can engage with content.

Benefits to the members of the University of Oxford include:

• Free sharing of knowledge to the academic community.
• Promoted engagement with the work — it is more easily accessible and therefore more likely to be read and cited.
• ORA makes notoriously elusive items such as some conference papers and posters, unpublished works and out of print items easy to obtain.
• It publicises the scholarly work and research of the University of Oxford and its members.
• Provides preservation and back-up of materials in the archive.

The full text and abstracts of many items within the archive can be downloaded free of charge without restriction by anyone with an Internet connection. New full texts are being added daily.

Using ORA

• Policies regarding the use of content, terms and conditions and notice and take down, can be found at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/policies.
• Information regarding searching ORA can be found at: https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ora/searching-ORA.
• Links to depositing and deposit guidance can be found at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/deposit.
• In collaboration with Research Services colleagues, who administer Symplectic Elements at Oxford, ORA offer a bulk ingest service to assist University of Oxford journal and series editors with depositing back catalogues of working paper series, and internally produced journals or other materials. Contact ORA to find out more.

Support and Certification

ORA aims to share metadata about its content and the research being completed at the University of Oxford as widely and as accessibly as possible. This involves meeting certain metadata standards, such as OpenAire; repository open access technical requirements instigated by funders, such as UKRI or as part of Coalition S; and inclusion in registries and databases.

Some of the registries and formats which ORA is proud to be supporting are listed below. More information can be found at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/api.