The infrastructure of scientific research in Palestine has gained considerable attention in the past few years. However, access to the research output has still been severely limited due to the lack of research output management. Therefore, it has become indispensable to promote the profile of IUG scientific research and to integrate it into the international research pool through a specific digital space.
The deanship of Scientific Research and Higher Studies in participation with the Faculty of Information Technology have launched the Digital Institutional Repository of the Islamic University (IUG Space) for managing and reaching out the research outputs.
The aim of establishing IUG space is to manage and endorse Open Access Institutional Repository (OAIR) that permits reaching to online digital collections of outputs created in the university, and maximize the visibility and impact of university outputs worldwide. As a result, it would foster scholarly communication and collaboration between IUG and national and international universities.
The IUG Space is distinguished of endorsing the Arabic and English version of the same scientific research in addition to providing a work plane for publishing. Furthermore, the IUG digital space works in accordance with the universal formats and searching engines; hence, it shows statistics for reaching and sharing. The teamwork has utilized the artificial inelegance in organizing data; a Pipeline tool for fulfilling the lost data of researchers and scientific papers was used, in particular. The teamwork has managed to connect the researchers' university pages with the IUG Space, where the list of conducted research for a researcher can be opened in IUG Space once click on the link at the university page.
Most importantly, the IUG repository compiled, in one month, about 9200 scientific research, which is reckoned the highest in Palestine. The total number is contributed to 2500 research for 140 researchers and 6000 MA dissertation all are products of Islamic University researchers.
IUG Space is the culmination of a brilliant effort excreted by IUG teamwork on Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project, entitled "Research Output Management through Open Access Institutional Repositories in Palestinian Higher Education (ROMOR)". The project purposes, over three-years training, to build topnotch capacities in research output management in Palestinian Higher Education Institutions. In addition, it endorses open access to research outputs. The Project comprises FOUR Palestinian Universities (Islamic University (IUG), Birzeit University (BZU), Al-Quds Open University (QOU), and Palestine Technical University Kadoori (KAD); in addition to FOUR European Universities (Vienna University of Technology (TUWIEN), University of PARMA, University of Brighton (BU), and University of Glasgow (UofG). IUG is the main applicant, coordinator and assistant partner to facilitate all activities of the Project including the early training in outputs management, as well as the installation of pilot repositories.
