About IReL

Who We Are

At IReL, we unite Irish research libraries to enhance access to vital e-resources. Our mission is to foster open science and support innovative research through collaborative agreements and infrastructure.

Our Journey: From Foundation to Future

IReL was founded to enhance access to vital research resources for Irish institutions. Over the years, we have evolved to support open access and foster collaboration among libraries.

Introduction

The Irish Research e-Library is a consortium of Irish research libraries. Established in 2004, it provides participating member institutions with access to a wide range of licensed e-resources, open access publishing agreements with over twenty publishers, and open research infrastructure. IReL is hosted by Maynooth University.

IReL has endorsed the NORF Action Plan, in particular its goal that by 2030 Ireland will have implemented a sustainable and inclusive course for achieving 100% open access to research publications.

IReL’s successes

Expanding access

Since 2004, IReL has provided Irish universities with access to a world-class electronic library service. IReL was established by the university librarians, initially to expand their libraries access to science, technology & medicine resources, but later grew to include the humanities and social sciences.

IReL’s membership has also grown from the initial founding universities to include publicly funded technological universities, colleges, and research institutes.

Opening up research

From 2020, IReL signed the first of its open access publishing agreements and has now expanded this to support over twenty such agreements, making Ireland a global leader in the provision of these services. The agreements allow researchers in IReL member institutions to publish their work open access in over ten thousand journals.

What is open access?

The Budapest Open Access Initiative defines open access to literature as its “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers…”

The Irish National OA Monitor tracks the number of OA publications IReL enables, year by year:

Coordinating trustworthy research infrastructure

IReL is increasingly involved in managing vital open research infrastructure. IReL leads the Irish ORCID and Datacite consortia, and manages the NORF-funded Irish Open Access Monitor.

Testimonials

The IReL service has been a key element in transforming the landscape for scientific research in Ireland. In terms of value for money it is hard to think of a better investment

Ray O’Neill

Maynooth University

This is absolutely essential. Without it we will be severely affected and research will suffer tremendously. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is that this be continued even if it were to be at the expense of other things.

Professor Luke O’Neill

Trinity College Dublin

At RCSI we want to maximise the visibility of our research, it’s a key way of strengthening our reputation and impact, and Open Access has proved a valuable way of doing this. The IReL agreements have been of great benefit, allowing many of our researchers to publish and promote their findings to a wider audience, including partners and public around the world.

Professor Fergal O’Brien

Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research & Innovation, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

Thanks to IReL’s negotiation and support for transformative agreements, Ireland now stands as a global leader in Open Access. We rank sixth amongst benchmarked countries, alongside renowned innovators in education such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.

Professor Eeva Leinonen

President of Maynooth University & Chair of IReL Governance Committee

IReL Members