Padua Research Archive IRIS University of Padua (Università degli Studi di Padova)

Overview

The Padua Research Archive (PRA), also known by its platform name IRIS (Institutional Research Information System), is the institutional repository of the University of Padua (Università degli Studi di Padova) in Italy. It serves as the central digital archive for the scientific production of one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1222.

History and Founding

The Padua Research Archive was introduced in July 2015, replacing the previous U-GOV Research publications catalogue. It operates on the IRIS platform developed by Cineca, the Italian interuniversity consortium for computing, which is shared by most Italian universities and public research institutes. The University of Padua was one of the first signatories of the Messina Declaration, Italy's formal act of adherence to the Berlin Declaration on Open Access, and its adoption of PRA-IRIS reflects a commitment to promoting the widest possible online dissemination of research results.

Collections and Holdings

The Padua Research Archive contains research articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, PhD theses, and other scholarly outputs produced by the university's faculty, researchers, PhD students, and research fellows. The repository also serves as the mandatory deposit system for doctoral theses, enabling legal deposit at the national central libraries as required by Italian legislation. An associated platform, the Padua Thesis and Dissertation Archive, handles undergraduate and master's thesis deposits. A separate Research Data Unipd platform manages research data archiving.

Access and Usage

The public portal of the Padua Research Archive is accessible at research.unipd.it. Authors may upload pre-prints, post-prints, or versions of record as permitted by publishers. Open access policies at the University of Padua, enshrined in Decree No. 2745 of 7 August 2017, require institutional staff to deposit their publications in the archive. The repository is indexed by major discovery services and satisfies mandatory reporting requirements for Italian and European funding bodies.