EPrints potential raised to 'a new dimension'

A new version of the open access software EPrints, being launched today (24th January) in San Antonio, USA, takes its potential to a ‘new dimension’, according to EPrints Technical Director, Dr Leslie Carr.

EPrints is already the world’s leading software for producing open access institutional repositories, which ensure that academic research is accessible and available on the World Wide Web. The new version, EPrints 3, will allow easier, time-saving deposits of academic research, benefiting researchers, librarians and webmasters, and making research more freely available to the public.

‘This brings open access closer to a reality,’ says Dr Carr. ‘EPrints 3 is a complete rewrite of the original software that addresses the key challenge facing repository managers now: how to produce a high value repository with quality assured contents.’

Dr Carr, who is based at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) will launch EPrints 3 today (24 January) at the prestigious Open Repositories Conference 2007 in San Antonio, Texas.

'EPrints has already gained the reputation of being a popular and pragmatic solution for producing a repository,' Dr Carr he says. 'Version 3 takes it to another dimension.’

ECS leads the world in open access, Its EPrints software developed in 2000, is already used in hundreds of institutional repositories (IRs) around the world.

‘The launch of EPrints 3 is particularly timely,’ says Dr Carr. ‘In the UK the Research Councils (RCUK) have announced that all research council-funded research must in future be placed in an institutional repository. Around the world, the success of the open access movement is ensuring that academics and universities want or, increasingly, are required, to make their research universally accessible to the wider community.'

Backed by a support team with expertise in the research, library and publishing industries, EPrints 3 is the basis of a variety of open source, bespoke and hosted repository solutions. It will be available at: http://www.eprints.org