Most higher-education institutions (HEIs) have an institutional repository (IR) to archive, display and share research output, typically managed by research libraries. When implementing such IRs, one could imagine two extremes when it comes to the upload of research output and the curation of the related metadata. One extreme would be a rather technical solution – a platform – allowing researchers to upload their research output without metadata enrichment and quality control by repository managers. The other extreme would be a fully integrated service in which the library takes over as much of the work as possible and aims for a complete bibliography for all researchers of an institute, research output described with rich and complete metadata, and a high Open Access (OA) rate of research output. Even when relying on automatic and semi-automated processes, such an IR requires considerable input and maintenance from repository managers, and for this reason we call it a “service-oriented repository”. While requiring these resources can limit the implementation of such repositories, we advocate for them here due to their ability to improve the visibility of researchers, their research output and, eventually, the visibility of HEIs.

Lib4RI has developed a search tool that brings together results from numerous sources in a clear and easily accessible way. The tool also provides information on options and funding possibilities for Open Access (OA) publishing of journal articles. The information is presented at the level of individual journal titles and tailored to the situation at the user's own institution. In this way, the Lib4RI Search Tool makes the previously scattered information conveniently available to our researchers. By combining content discovery with publishing services, the tool is the central starting point for information from Lib4RI and helps to further increase the OA share of publications.