Open Access and Institutional Repositories with EPrints

EPrints is the most flexible platform for building high quality, high value repositories, recognised as the easiest and fastest way to set up repositories of research literature, scientific data, student theses, project reports, multimedia artefacts, teaching materials, scholarly collections, digitised records, exhibitions and performances.

Within this site you will find information and resources to make open access a reality within your own institution: open source software and support, commercial hosting, training and development services and also open access advice and information.

Latest Training: March 24-26 2010 Topics include customising your repository, adding new services and a special focus on Linked Data: How does the Semantic Web impact Institutions and Repositories? Contact EPrints Services to register.

EPrints Repository Software

EPrints open source software is a flexible platform for building high quality, high value repositories. It is recognised as the easiest and fastest way to set up repositories of research outputs of literature, scientific data, theses and reports or multimedia artefacts from collections, exhibitions and performances.

Archive Documents, Multimedia and Data
Multi-Language Support
OAI Compliant

269 known archives are running EPrints worldwide.

Total records in known archives: 519952

EPrints is developed at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK.

EPrints Services

The EPrints services team provides a fee-based advice and consultancy service that can deliver a range of solutions, from initial help and guidance through to a completely managed service for an institutional repository.

We have experience with deploying repositories at all scales, ranging from large, broad-based research universities to single-subject departments, and will take time to understand your particular requirements. Our goal is always to deliver a repository that fulfils all your needs.

"moved the institutional repository forward swiftly, efficiently and successfully." The Open University

"speed of response has been phenomenal" Bournemouth University

Open Access to Research

We are creating the environment in which Open Access will become the norm for distributing research:

ROAR tracks the growth of existing OA Archives.
ROARMAP tracks the growth of institutional self-archiving policies.
ROMEO tracks journal/publisher "green" policies on author self-archiving
The OAA Bibliography tracks the studies on the OA advantage in research usage and impact.
The Self-Archiving FAQ tracks and answers questions about self-archiving.
Citebase tracks citations: a scientometric OA search engine.
The American Scientist Open Access Forum has been tracking OA progress since 1998.
News and views blogs
- Open Access Archivangelism by Stevan Harnad
- EPrints Insiders on institutional repositories, especially those built with EPrints

EPrints Preservation Support

Long term preservation of digital materials is important in a world where our outputs are increasingly only available in digital form. EPrints repository software helps you to manage and control a portfolio of local, enterprise and cloud storage services and digital preservation activities.

Find out more at our dedicated preservation site.

UK's 30/31st Green OA Self-Archiving Mandate, Planet's 142/143rd

07/02/2010
University of Strathclyde
and
Brunel University

Please register your own university's mandate in ROARMAP too, to track progress and to encourage other universities to adopt mandates of their own.

Harvard's Recommendations to President Obama on Public Access Policy

26/01/2010
Professor Steven Hyman, Provost of Harvard, the first US University to mandate Open Access, has submitted such a spot-on, point for point response to President Obama’s Request for Information on Public Access Policy that if his words are heeded, the beneficiaries will not only be US research progress and the US tax-paying public, by whom US research is funded and for whose benefit it is conducted, but research progress and its public benefits planet-wide, as US policy is globally reciprocated.

Professor Hyman's every point has a special salience, and attests to the minute attention and keen insight into the subtle details of Open Access that went into the preparation of this invaluable set of recommendations.

OA Impact Advantage Not A Self-Selection Artefact

5/1/2010
Articles whose authors make them Open Access (OA) by self-archiving them online are cited significantly more than articles accessible only to subscribers. Some have suggested that this "OA Advantage" may be just a self-selection bias from authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. A systematic comparison of self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving revealed that the OA Advantage is just as high for both. The advantage is also greater for the more citeable articles, not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. Preprint.

ROARMAP: 1 Irish + 1 Scottish Green OA Mandate: 139 Total

29/12/2009
With the adoption of Abertay Dundee's and Dublin Institute of Technology's Green Open Access Self-Archiving Mandates, the worldwide total at the end of 2009 comes to 139 -- except if a few more get registered in ROARMAP before 1 January 2010...

News Archive