The EPrints story: Southampton as the cradle of institutional self-archiving

The idea of institutional self-archiving was conceived 15 years ago, has gained momentum and is here to stay. It is inseparably linked to one of the movement’s pioneers, the University of Southampton, UK. This article is about Southampton’s tireless involvement in the self-archiving movement and describes the history of EPrints, the first freely available software designed to set up an institutional repository. EPrints has since evolved into Open Source software for creating most powerful information hubs and remains one of the most used repository platforms worldwide. Institutions with limited knowledge or personnel have the additional choice to use the not-for-profit EPrints Services to get their EPrints repository up and running