Open your institution's repository with RDL Open
Set up an archive that publishes your university's publications, theses and datasets under your own name, to international open-access standards. This guide takes an institution administrator from application to the first published record.
Before you start
- Your institution's open-repository agreement with RDL (partner application)
- An institution administrator account (set up by RDL)
- (Optional) the address of your current repository, for migration
Steps
- 1
Sign in to your institution's portal
Sign in with your administrator account at your institution's own portal address (e.g. institution-rdlopen.rawdatalibrary.net).
- 2
Organise communities and collections
Build the community tree by faculty, graduate school and research unit; set each collection's content type and default access status.
- 3
Populate the archive from trusted sources
Pull your institution's records from OpenAlex, Crossref, ORCID and ROR; if you run a DSpace repository, migrate it together with its persistent links.
Tip: Every incoming record lands in a review queue first, marked as new, update or duplicate, and is never published without approval. - 4
Add full texts and access rights
Upload PDFs and choose open, embargoed or restricted access; every record gets a persistent RDL Link.
- 5
Turn on discoverability
Register your harvesting address with OpenAIRE, BASE and national indexes; records are published on Google Scholar-ready pages.
You're all set! 🎉
Once you've completed these steps you can start using the product actively. If you get stuck, check the FAQ.