To begin, let us answer the obvious question: what is an author eprint from T&F? An eprint is a link (it looks like a web address) that directs you to the author's published article on Taylor & Francis Online and gives you free access to that article. The eprints allow authors and researchers to share free access to their article with up to 50 friends and colleagues, enabling them to publicise their article through their own networks – raising its influence and aiding to disseminate their work – and promote the journal in the process. It additionally starts the ‘firing gun’ on article citations on the day of publication.
An eprint link looks like this (this one won't work, it's just for illustration)
All authors who publish in a T&F or Routledge journal receive their own unique eprint link to share. It is not reserved only for the lead or contact author of a paper, but each author we hold an email address for gets their own separate allocation of 50 eprints.
Has this initiative been successful? Since launch in early 2012, more than 290, 000 articles have been downloaded through our author eprint links. That is a significant benefit for authors and their colleagues!
The next point to clarify is how do authors access their eprints? There are two ways:
When a paper is first posted or published on Taylor & Francis Online, the author will be alerted by email that their paper is available online. This email includes details of how they can access their paper (as well as information on the other services we provide to our authors) and also includes the eprint link, displayed in full, so that authors can immediately begin to share free access to their work.
Another route for authors to access their eprint link is to sign in to Taylor & Francis Online and go to the My Authored Works page. The My Authored Works page is an area of the site that is uniquely tailored to each one of our authors, listing each article they have ever published with T&F. Alongside the information about each article, such as the number of views the article has received and details of how many times and where the article has been cited, the eprint link is displayed in full. Authors can simply copy the link from here to begin sharing free access to their article.
When the 50 limit has been reached the eprint link will still direct people to the author's article ensuring that authors do not need to worry about cleaning up dead links, provided that they remember to state that the number of free downloads is capped at 50.
All articles on Taylor & Francis Online display an article views count, which is a measure of the number of times the article has been read or downloaded, so we would encourage all authors to make use of their eprints by sharing them with their colleagues and peers to ensure that their paper is clearly seen to have been read by others in the field. So, for very little time or effort, your authors can help increase the visibility of their published work and in so doing help to make their article and your journal standout, all for free.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David Burgoyne
David Burgoyne, Senior eProduct Manager, joined Taylor & Francis in 2005 as a Publishing Editor within the business, economics and sociocultural studies group, before becoming the team's Electronic Content Manager. In 2009, he joined the newly formed Electronic Projects team, now eProducts Management, which is responsible for the product management of new digital projects and online initiatives within the Journals business including responsibility for the development of the journals online platform, Taylor & Francis Online.