The archive aims at being a direct tool for scientific communication between academics. Scholars can upload full-text research material to www.hprints.org, e.g. articles, conference papers, book chapters etc. The submission policy is that content of the posted material should be comparable to that of a paper that could in principle be accepted for publication in a scientific journal.

This is an opportunity for scholars to gain longstanding visibility. First of all, it is possible to search and find the paper by defined topics through an Internet search. Secondly, all submitted papers will be stored permanently and receive a stable web address.

Hprints.org is initially a Nordic project (funded by the Nordbib funding agency), but it is open to all humanities scholars world-wide. The archive is also part of HAL: The French national Open Access database with more than 100.000 full text preprints in all fields of research. Readers get free access to the latest scholarly research within their field, through RSS and email alerts.