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EPrints is a GNU open source software package supported by the University of Southampton, UK. Its development was funded by the UK research system, notably JISC. It is the first and most widely used institutional repository software in the world with over 195 known archives.
EPrints is recommended as the best choice of software for any institution wanting a plain vanilla institutional repository to provide open access to research articles and/or e-theses (but it is also easily configurable to provide the functionality of any of the other archive software if desired). It is not restricted to text uploads; indeed any kind of file can be included in the repository. It is easy to install, easy to customize, and works without faults. There are a number of useful extensions to EPrints that are available, particularly to interface to the Australasian Digital Theses Program, and to provide statistics feedback.
The EPrints workshop on 1 February 2006 contains the following topics as an example of the power of the software:
- EPrints for RQF - EPrints-based tools for gathering evidence portfolios to support research assessment. Plus, EPrints tools for helping research managers aggregate and assess a group’s portfolio. See also the RQF page.
- EPrints Web Services - a key facility for closer integration with institutional systems, and a way to develop new interfaces, bespoke deposit procedures or tailored reporting facilities on the development platform of your choice.
- Data Repositories - how to create and maintain EPrint archives of research data for e-research.
- Multimedia repositories - how to create and maintain EPrint archives of multimedia material.
- Promoting Individual and Group Research - how to create and maintain up-to-date bibliographies for all your researchers to feature on their home pages. How to create RSS feeds of the latest research from your schools, departments or research groups.
- One for All or All for One? - how to provide separate departmental identities in one institutional repository vs how to manage a collection of repositories.
The key site for further information on EPrints (and download) is http://www.eprints.org/. Southampton University also offer a consulting service for anyone wanting assistance. See also RQF for information on making EPrints RQF-ready.
Many of you have also seen our author-oriented statistics and admired them. This is a package that analyses the access logs and produces meaningful statistics for authors on accesses to their documents. This is a major motivator in involving researchers in developing better dissemination practices. If you are determined to operate a voluntary deposit policy, it is essential to your persuasive efforts. If you will operate a mandatory deposit policy, your authors will bless you. In response to continuing enquiries we have mounted them as downloadable objects, obtainable from http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/archive/00000221/ (yes, it is an urban myth that EPrints servers are limited to text objects) or http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/downloads/. The package has been distributed internationally, and can be seen in action on our EPrints website http://eprints.comp.utas.edu.au:81/; look towards the bottom of the entry page, or look at the bottom of any document metadata page. See also the University of Otago and the University of Arizona for further examples.
We also include instructions on how to interface awstats (the open source best practice server traffic analyzer) to EPrints. It produces a wealth of useful info for the repository manager.
There is a parallel set of stats to work on DSpace repositories too, available from the University of Minho. Fez has also adapted the Tasmanian package to Fez.
However at this time we would encourage DSpace and EPrints users to install the newer IRStats package, which built on our experience but is far more comprehensive.