The higher education and professional environments have been transformed for the last 20 years by the digital publishing revolution. Electronic resources and open access repositories are now part of research and professional tools. Herein the writer describes his experience with institutional open access repositories, and some implications in terms of research, impact and quality in civil engineering. It is critical to appreciate that civil engineering is not a "virtual" science, and that the digital "band-aids" do not replace scholarship, personal experience and smart thinking
