Welcome on the webpage dedicated to DIAL.pr!

It is a platform—a tool for electronically collecting the scholarly output of a institution’s faculty and researchers and making it freely accessible, to the extent possible, to increase its visibility. Institutional repositories also enable what is known as green open access, which involves making publications available in open access on the repository.

This is the institutional repository for research and knowledge produced at UCLouvain. All faculties, institutes, and staff members can submit materials to DIAL.pr. It enables the long-term preservation and online access to scientific publications.

An institutional repository allows for:

• the creation of a comprehensive and permanent archive of an institution’s scientific publications.
• ensuring that the academic community has access to its researchers’ publications.
• increase the visibility of the university and its researchers worldwide.
• facilitate access to scientific information.
• comply with laws and regulations.

With DIAL.pr, you have the opportunity to permanently and centrally store all your publications and other research documents such as reports, working papers, patents, etc. DIAL.pr ensures their visibility and permanent access. 

DIAL.pr also allows you to generate customized bibliographic exports, as well as FNRS and FWB bibliographic exports. The bibliographic lists generated by DIAL.pr can be used for research funding allocations, appointments, promotions, and more. Several value-added features are available on DIAL.pr: viewing and download statistics for your publications, general submission statistics, a link to your ORCID account, the option to indicate the use of a CC license, and more

Access to the information in the repository does not require registration and is available to everyone. However, adding and editing records, uploading documents, and accessing certain documents are restricted to university members. To log in to DIAL.pr, click on “UCLouvain SSO” and, if necessary, enter your UCLouvain username and password in the fields provided.

On July 2, 2012, the Academic Council of UCLouvain decided to make the registration of bibliographic data and the deposit of the full text mandatory for all publications effective January 1, 2013. The deposit of the full text applies only to publications produced on or after 2013. The full text of these publications will be available in open access only in accordance with applicable copyright and publisher rights regulations and the Open Access Decree. All document types listed in DIAL.pr are subject to mandatory deposit. Since 2018, a decree from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation has made it mandatory to deposit all scientific articles with the full text in Open Access on the University’s institutional repository. An embargo period is permitted: it may not exceed 6 months for the health sciences and science and technology sectors, and 12 months for the humanities sector.

DIAL.pr allows authors to grant or deny access to submitted documents. There are four types of access:

• Forbidden access.
• Restricted access allows users to view and download a document only.
• Open access, which allows everyone (including unauthenticated visitors) to access the document.
• Embargo, which allows access to the document to be restricted for a specified period, after which access becomes automatically unrestricted.

Bibliographic metadata are publicly available on DIAL.pr and accessible to everyone without the need to log in. To access the full text of publications deposited in DIAL.pr—whether open access or restricted access—users must review and accept the terms of use. Once these terms are accepted, users are authorized to read, download, copy, transmit, and reproduce the work on paper or any other medium, solely for private use, for educational purposes, or for scientific research. Any use for profit or commercial purposes is strictly prohibited. The user also agrees to respect the moral rights of the author(s), primarily the right to the integrity of the work and attribution (copyright). The user may therefore not modify, transform, or adapt the work without the author’s express permission. When reproducing the document in part or in its entirety for the purposes authorized by this license, the user shall cite the sources as mentioned in DIAL. Note that Open Access publications are sometimes associated with specific licenses, such as Creative Commons licenses, which allow users to make use of these publications within the limits authorized by these licenses without having to request the author’s express permission. When a publication has such a license, it is generally indicated in the PDF of the publication and/or on the website of the journal in which it was published and may also be indicated by an icon next to the file on DIAL.pr if the uploader has specified it.

Documents marked as restricted access that a user outside UCLouvain wishes to access may be subject to a special access request called request copy. An email is sent to the authors, who have the option to approve or deny the request. Documents with forbidden access cannot be subject to such a request

User guides and tutorials are available on this webpage

Via the link "Ask a question" at the bottom of the pages on DIAL.pr, a ticketing system will allow you to send your question to the DIAL.pr managers. 

Don't hesitate either to ask your librairian. 

You can also send an email to dial@uclouvain.be

Open access to scientific publications refers to making them available for free on the internet, allowing any user to:

• read
• download
• copy
• print
• share
• modify

Users are required to acknowledge and cite the author and to indicate the source of the original work on any reproduction or modification of that work. More information on open access is available on the libraries and learning centers website 

The main benefits of open access relate to the visibility and impact of the publication. Open access allows for wider dissemination of research findings throughout the scientific community. Free articles available online are viewed more often than publications or journals that require a subscription. Generally speaking, if an article receives a high number of views, it will be cited more frequently and have a greater impact

The decree of May 3, 2018, establishing a policy on open access to scientific publications (the “Open Access” decree) took effect at the start of the 2018–2019 academic year. According to the legislature, the purpose of this decree is to:

• Promote the open access dissemination of research results funded by public grants originating wholly or partly from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation to enable the free circulation of knowledge and innovation.
• Enable everyone, regardless of their means, to access scientific literature produced by researchers.
• Increase the visibility of these researchers and their work.

Strengthen research conducted in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation by giving it maximum visibility and promote the societal impact of discoveries or inventions funded in whole or in part by the Federation. 

The publications covered by the decree are scientific articles accepted for publication in journals that appear at least once a year. This applies only to articles accepted (post-print version) for publication since September 2018. 

For other publications (monographs, posters, theses) or articles published before September 2018, the acess is left to the author’s discretion, although UCLouvain strongly encourages Open Access.

Compliance with the Open Access decree is crucial for researchers. Indeed, any committee or commission responsible for evaluating applications for appointment, promotion, or the allocation of research grants will rely solely on the list generated by DIAL.pr in accordance with the terms of the decree (see the FWB export on DIAL.pr). Publications subject to the decree that are not made available in Open Access will therefore not be considered for these evaluations. Researchers therefore have every interest in making as many of their publications as possible available in Open Access.

The decree mandates a maximum embargo period of 6 months (SST and SSS) and 12 months (SSH), regardless of the contract entered into with the publisher. This decree takes precedence over contract law. For more information about your rights and obligations regarding Open Access, visit the Libraries and Learning Centers website