Research outputs produced by developing countries lack visibility. Common reasons are high costs of publishing, reluctance to share, as well as lack of journals focusing on research challenges specific to developing countries. The ongoing change towards open access and the rising popularity of institutional repositories allows for bridging the gap to developed countries. However, this still requires cultural, organizational and technical changes. In this paper, we describe a holistic approach for deploying open access repositories and building research data management services and increasing data curation skills. We describe how we identified users’ needs and necessary supporting systems and services. We also explain the rationale and challenges faced when implementing popular repository systems and share experiences in developing institutional data management policies. Finally, we provide common goals for a national roadmap. All these actions are the first step towards the preservation of both research outputs and cultural assets. The paper is based on our experiences from ROMOR project that helped in establishing policies, systems, and organizational workflows at four Palestinian universities.