The Leicester Research Archive (LRA) is helping the University to develop coherent and coordinated approaches to the capture, identification, storage and retrieval of its intellectual assets as part of the Open Access movement.

Open Access (often shortened to OA) originated from within academia in the late 20th century, where rising journal prices and inaccessibility of research in many disciplines began to frustrate many. While the common practice of exchanging pre-prints of publications in some disciplines was well established, the rise of the world wide web gave forth an opportunity to share this work in a more systematic way.

• Resources and further reading

Subject and institutional repositories

Initially subject repositories were created and maintained within certain disciplines by enthusiasts; but in the new millennia this role began to be taken on by institutions seeking to showcase, share and curate their own intellectual output, and thus institutional repositories like the LRA came into existence.

Open Access and HE

In 2003/4 the UK House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology recommended that:

...all UK higher education institutions establish institutional repositories on which their published output can be stored and from which it can be read, free of charge, online. It also recommends that Research Councils and other Government funders mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of all of their articles in this way.

From the summary of the 10th report of that committee for the session 2003-04

Mandates and requirements

Since then, there have been developments most notably from the Research Councils and the University itself. You can find details of the policies of all the UK research councils, the Wellcome Trust and the NIH in the SHERPA/JULIET website.

If your funding body mandates you to place your work in an institutional repository, then LRA will satisfy them. If you are not clear whether LRA fulfils your needs contact your Information Librarian.