The EPrints software is not to be confused with "Eprints" (or "e-prints"), which are preprints (before peer review) and postprints (after peer review), of research journal articles (eprints = preprints + postprints).
History
EPrints was created in 2000[4] as a direct outcome of the 1999 Santa Fe meeting[5] that launched what eventually became the OAI-PMH.
The EPrints software was enthusiastically received[6] and became the first and one of the most widely used[7] free open access, institutional repository software, and it has since inspired the development of other software that fulfil a similar purpose,[8] notably DSpace.
Version 3 of the software was officially released on 24 January 2007 at the Open Repositories 2007 Conference[9] and was described by its developers as "a major leap forward in functionality, giving even more control and flexibility to repository managers, depositors, researchers and technical administrators".[10]
Version 3 of the software introduced a (Perl-based) plugin architecture for importing and exporting data, converting objects (for search engine indexing) and user interface widgets.[13]
Configuring an EPrints repository involves modifying configuration files written in Perl or XML. The appearance of a repository is controlled by HTML templates, CSS stylesheets and inline images. While EPrints is shipped with an English translation it has been translated to other languages through (redistributable) language-specific XML phrase files. Existing translations include Bulgarian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.[14]