FAQ for Readers ~ FAQ for Authors ~ Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ for Authors

Who can add content to the bepress Legal Repository?
Many institutions have working paper series within the bepress Legal Repository, but any academic, researcher, legal professional, or scholar working within the field of law can post their material.
How do I add my content?
The best way to promote, distribute, and disseminate your research is to use our Selected Works service, a new, personalized, scholarship distribution network that works in tandem with the bepress Legal Repository. With Selected Works, you can quickly and easily disseminate all of your works, from published and unpublished articles to presentations, popular press, books and book chapters, on a highly visible, personalized web page. In addition, you can post the full text, link to full text on another website, or just cite your papers. All content posted to Selected Works is automatically included in the bepress Legal Repository and benefits from being part of ResearchNow--an extensive collection of quality academic research (over 130,000 papers strong). To learn more about Selected Works, or to start your own Selected Works site, please visit the Selected Works home page.
Is it difficult to build a Selected Works site?
No. Creating a site takes about five minutes and requires no technical skill. Once you add papers, they are automatically dropped into the bepress Legal Repository. Get started now!
My department already posts working papers on our website. Why should I build a Selected Works site?
Your research will reach significantly more people within the academic community when included in your Selected Works site and posted to the repository. In addition, Selected Works offers functionality that school websites just don't have. For example, Selected Works sites:
  • take less than 5 minutes to create
  • automatically pull in all of your working papers from the bepress Legal Repository, any bepress journals and UMI
  • automatically track readership of all articles
  • allow you to maintain personal mailings lists: your colleagues can join right from your home page
  • allow you (or your assistant) to upload/revise/withdraw content in seconds--including all of your publications and personal information
  • content is indexed in our ResearchNow system (over 130,000 papers), which means that it is extremely visible on the web
Lastly, Selected Works and the bepress Legal Repository outperform any school's website in terms of traffic, readership, and search and browse functionality. In addition to the prominent standing that the bepress Legal Repository holds within general search engines, repository content is full-text indexed by Google, which means that our articles show up in key word search results.
Besides promoting their scholarship, why else do authors post in the repository?
Preserving and archiving your work in the bepress Legal Repository makes it easier for scholars and researchers around the world to discover your work, including those who may not have access to subscription journals. Posting also allows you to stake an early intellectual claim to an area of research.
How many scholars in law read this content?
In 2006, bepress Legal Repository articles received over 700,000 full-text downloads.
Does bepress own the papers that it posts?
Since these working papers are works in progress, we hold no ownership of the content. Authors are free to publish/post their content elsewhere.
How is my work discovered?
We offer several unique paths of discovery to content including a powerful, advanced search engine, and browsing by subject, author, new content, or most popular papers. Email notification by subject, author, institution or key word also allows readers to access your content through customized searches. Please see our Information for Readers page to learn more about these paths of discovery.
In addition, authors with Selected Works sites can announce their research to their personal network whenever they wish.
How do I know how often my paper is being read?
Within your Selected Works site, your download counts are automatically tracked and available to you at any time. A full-text download is accomplished when a reader selects the download the paper option and allows your paper's PDF to launch in their browser.
Are other people in the law community posting on the bepress Legal Repository?
Yes; over 3,200 authors have posted so far in the bepress Legal Repository, and that number is growing. Major departments and institutions are contributing their prepublication materials to the collection, including Yale, Columbia, NYU, University of Michigan and UC Berkeley.
Should I worry about someone using my ideas if I post my work on the repository?
Quite the opposite. We have actually found that posting a working paper allows one to stake an early intellectual claim to an idea, as it creates a very visible public record of a researcher's work in progress.
My school has a working paper series with the bepress Legal Repository already. How do I post?
Most schools with institutional accounts have a designated series administrator, who is responsible for posting papers. If you do not have a series administrator, or you do not know who your administrator is, please go to your school's bepress Legal Repository homepage and click submit a paper.
Can I start a Selected Works site if my school already has a working paper series with bepress?
Yes, and the advantage is that any of your working papers that have been posted to the bepress Legal Repository will be automatically included. Also, we will set up your administrator to get notified of any new working papers that you post, so that he/she can include those papers in your school's repository. Just go to works.bepress.com to get started.
My school does not have an institutional account. How do I post?
  1. Go to works.bepress.com.
  2. Click Start your Selected Works site.
  3. Login to your account, or create a free account if you do not have one. If you already have a bepress account, make sure to login with that email address and password.
  4. The system will walk you through the three easy site-building steps.
  5. Personalize and promote your site!

For more detailed directions, please visit the Selected Works FAQ page.

Can I remove my paper from Selected Works and the bepress Legal Repository?
If you are a Selected Works author, you can remove any papers at anytime. If you post to your school's working paper series and wish to remove a paper, simply send your request to your administrator who will remove the paper for you. Or, send an email to working_papers@bepress.com and we will remove the paper for you.
I have a publication offer. Should I take my paper off my SelectedWorks site?
That depends on the individual publisher. Although you always have the right, as an author, to post your paper's citation information on your Selected Works site, you may need to withdraw the full text (or link out to the full text on the publisher's site). You must treat each paper on a case-by-base basis. Click Here for law specific copyright information.
What about the legal repository?
Sharing a working version of a paper with other scholars rarely interferes with the publication of your paper. Many papers in the repository have been published in journals, but continue to be available in an earlier form on our site. With that said, there are a few journals that ask authors to remove all previous versions of their papers from Web sites. It is your responsibility to check with the publisher to see if they will or will not allow you to keep the full text of your papers on a publicly accessed website.