The F.R.S.-FNRS has recently launched PeriScops, an innovative platform that centralizes references to publications available in the institutional scientific repositories of the five universities within the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB). Its goal? To increase the visibility of research and provide seamless global access to scientific publications. Developed by ULiège Library, this portal already provides access to over 826,000 references, including 258,000 open-access documents.
Centralized access to scientific publications
Funded and coordinated by the FNRS, PeriScops is designed as a single-entry point for accessing all scientific publications stored in the institutional repositories of the FWB universities. With powerful search functionalities, a clear interface, and optimized bibliographic identification, PeriScops facilitates access to the scientific output of the FWB.
Every day, the platform automatically harvests metadata and references from the institutional repositories of the five universities. As a result, users can access journal articles, books and book chapters, research reports, doctoral theses, working papers, patents, educational materials, as well as public outreach and science communication materials produced by the francophone Belgian scientific community.
Advanced features
Whenever a new publication is added to a university's institutional repository, it is automatically indexed in PeriScops. Users can set up customized alerts and receive notifications via email—at their preferred frequency—when new references matching their research interests are added.
To ensure the quality of references, PeriScops includes a duplicate-checking system. When the same publication is listed by multiple institutions (for instance, when co-authors are affiliated with different universities), the references are consolidated into a single entry, preventing unnecessary repetitions.
In addition to free access to a vast range of scientific content, PeriScops supports cross-thematic searches, providing a more comprehensive overview of available research within a specific field.
The expertise of ULiège Library
The development of PeriScops was entrusted to ULiège Library, which won the public contract due to its recognized expertise in managing scientific repositories.
"We faced several challenges, as each university structures its institutional repository using different tools and metadata formats," explains Paul Thirion, Director of ULiège Library. "We applied the well-established principles of ORBi to PeriScops, although not all metadata available on ORBi has been fully integrated into this new tool."
Thanks to this expertise, PeriScops has established itself as a reliable, high-performing, and essential platform for the dissemination of scientific publications in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.
L'édition 2026 de la Nuit des Chercheur·es se tiendra le vendredi 25 septembre 2026. Impliquée dans la Nuit des Chercheur·es depuis sa création, l'ULiège vous invite à participer à cette manifestation de culture scientifique.
SCOPE, dedicated to developing more sustainable IT infrastructure, and ShuttleToBrain, which explores new approaches to improving the delivery of drugs to the brain. Two new IMR projects at ULiège.
Measuring seven metres in diameter and nearly fourteen metres in length, FOCAL 7 will be the CSL’s largest vacuum chamber, and one of the largest in Europe !
