About UCL Eprints

UCL Eprints is an "open access" repository that collects the work of UCL researchers and makes it freely available over the web.

Eprints are electronic copies of academic papers. Eprints can be "preprints" (journal articles submitted for peer review), "postprints" (final, refereed versions of journal articles, accepted for publication), or similar material such as book chapters, conference papers, working papers, reports to funding bodies, and so on. The UCL Eprints repository helps the worldwide scholarly community to discover and retrieve UCL research.

"Self-archiving" - the deposit by authors of copies of research papers in institutional repositories like UCL Eprints - is an increasingly commonplace complement to the traditional academic publishing and scholarly communication processes. Institutional repositories raise the visibility of research and help to maximise its impact. UCL researchers are encouraged to deposit a copy of each journal article, conference paper, etc. in the UCL Eprints repository at the earliest opportunity, ensuring that their research reaches as wide an audience as possible.

Depositing work with UCL Eprints is a simple process. Further information is available in the UCL Eprints Deposit Guide.

The advantages to UCL researchers of using UCL Eprints

The Project

Development work on UCL Eprints has been funded through the SHERPA-LEAP Project. SHERPA-LEAP is a University of London consortium, led by UCL, which has created institutional repositories at 13 UoL institutions. Seed funding for SHERPA-LEAP came from the University Vice-Chancellor's Development Fund; the Project is also an associate partner of SHERPA, a UK network of over 20 institutional repositories.

Further Information

A helpful introductory survey by Dr Alma Swan: Open Access and the Progress of Science (published in American Scientist 95(3), 2007).

Peter Suber's Open Access News collates news of Open Access developments worldwide, with frequent daily updates (available as a newsfeed).

The SHERPA web site is a useful source of information about eprints repositories and scholarly communication in general.

Professor Stevan Harnad of Southampton University has produced a detailed and entertaining self-archiving FAQ.

Contact Information

Any correspondence concerning this specific repository should be sent to lib-eprints@ucl.ac.uk.