Guest Post by Dominic Allington-Smith (Open Access Publications Manager)

Maryam Khan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

UCL Discovery, UCL’s institutional repository, has hit another milestone! UCL Publications Board and the Open Access Team are excited to share that on Friday 18 July, the number of downloads reached the 60 million mark. UCL Discovery is UCL’s open access repository, showcasing and providing access to UCL research outputs from all UCL disciplines. UCL authors currently deposit around 1,100 outputs in the repository every month (average figure for the current academic year).

The 60 millionth download was of the interim report ‘Young people & coastal communities: Local policymaker and practitioner perspectives’ produced by the UCL Coastal Youth Life Chances project led by Professor Avril Keating.  This research project examines how growing up in coastal communities in England impacts the life chances of young people. The report arises from the project team’s conversations with 50 policymakers and practitioners from around England about their perspectives on the challenges facing young adults aged 15-20.

At the time of writing, UCL Discovery hosts over 193,200 open access publications, comprising mostly self-archived copies of research outputs, but also including doctoral and research master’s theses (contemporary submissions and historic digitisations), and books published by UCL Press.  Since the 50 million downloads milestone in June 2024, the following titles are the highest-downloaded publications for each UCL Faculty, Institute or School. This list continues to reflect the diversity across UCL research:

• Faculty of Arts and Humanities: Цифровые гуманитарные науки Хрестоматия / Digital humanities: in search of definitions (book, 2017)
• Faculty of Laws: Artificial Intelligence, Education and Assessment at UCL Laws: Current Thinking and Next Steps for the UK Legal Education Sector (working/discussion paper, 2025)
• School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies: The Gesta Hungarorum of Anonymus, the Anonymous Notary of King Béla: A Translation (journal article, 2009)*
• Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences: The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years (UCL Press book, 2019)
• Faculty of the Built Environment (Bartlett): Space Syntax: Selected papers by Bill Hillier (UCL Press book, 2025)
• Faculty of Engineering Sciences: Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge (journal article, 2017)
• Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences: The Traditional Four Steps Transportation Modeling Using a Simplified Transport Network: A Case Study of Dhaka City, Bangladesh (journal article, 2012)*
• Faculty of Brain Sciences: What is mentalization? The concept and its foundations in developmental research (book chapter, 2012)*
• Faculty of Life Sciences: FIP Global Pharmacy Workforce Report 2012 (report, 2012)
• Faculty of Medical Sciences: Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (UCL Press book, 2016)*
• Faculty of Population Health Sciences: Global, regional, and national burden of stroke and its risk factors, 1990-2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (journal article, 2021)
• Institute of Education: Intelligence Unleashed: An argument for AI in Education (report, 2016)

* These publications are also the highest-downloaded of all time.

Hitting 60 million downloads highlights the reach and potential which comes from sharing research through UCL Discovery. There are a number of ways you can do this, primarily through sharing your research publications via UCL RPS and Profiles. You might also want to consider sharing other types of outputs such as data, code and software to further enhance the visibility and reproducibility of your work. UCL’s Research Data Management team maintain a guide on best practice for software sustainability, preservation and sharing, and can give further support to UCL researchers as required.

Another year of sharing research, and another incredible milestone – congratulations to everyone involved! Let’s keep it up and continue pursuing open access at UCL to ensure we are reaching the widest audience and having the greatest impact.

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Guest Post by Dominic Allington-Smith (Open Access Publications Manager)

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

UCL Publications Board and the Open Access Team are delighted to announce that on Monday 24 June, UCL’s institutional repository, UCL Discovery, reached the milestone of 50 million downloads! UCL Discovery is UCL’s open access repository, showcasing and providing access to UCL research outputs from all UCL disciplines. UCL authors currently deposit around 1,675 outputs in the repository every month (average figure for the current academic year).

The 50 millionth download was of the paper ‘Replenishing IRAK-M expression in retinal pigment epithelium attenuates outer retinal degeneration’ originally published in Science Translational Medicine by a team of researchers including UCL co-lead author Professor Andrew Dick.  This paper found that increasing the levels of a key protein in the cells at the back of the eye could help protect against the age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss among older adults.

UCL Discovery hosts over 178,500 open access publications at the time of writing, comprising mostly self-archived copies of research outputs published elsewhere to bypass publisher paywalls, but also including doctoral and research master’s theses (contemporary submissions and historic digitisations), and books published by UCL Press.  This variety of resources is displayed when viewing the highest-downloaded publication within the UCL hierarchy:

• Faculty of Arts and Humanities: A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education (UCL Press book, 2017)
• Faculty of Laws: Confessions, illegally/improperly obtained evidence and entrapment under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984: changing judicial and public attitudes to the police and criminal investigations (thesis, 1999)
• School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies: The Gesta Hungarorum of Anonymus, the Anonymous Notary of King Béla: A Translation (journal article, 2009)
• Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences: How the World Changed Social Media (UCL Press book, 2016)
• Faculty of the Built Environment (Bartlett): Why are most buildings rectangular? (journal article, 2006)
• Faculty of Engineering Sciences: Semi-structured qualitative studies (book chapter, 2013)
• Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences: The Traditional Four Steps Transportation Modeling Using a Simplified Transport Network: A Case Study of Dhaka City, Bangladesh (journal article, 2012)
• Faculty of Brain Sciences: What is mentalization? The concept and its foundations in developmental research (book chapter, 2012)
• Faculty of Life Sciences: Evaluation of the scale, causes and costs of waste medicines. Report of DH funded national project (report, 2010)
• Faculty of Medical Sciences: Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (UCL Press book, 2016)
• Faculty of Population Health Sciences: Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective (report, 2006)
• Institute of Education: Teaching at a distance in a digital age: perspectives from the Philippines (thesis, 2013)

This amazing milestone shows the scope and reach that sharing research through UCL Discovery has. There are a number of ways you can share your research at UCL, and we encourage you to continue sharing your research publications via UCL RPS and Profiles. Additionally, consider sharing other types of outputs such as data, code and software to further enhance the visibility and reproducibility of your work. The Research Data Management team maintain a guide on best practice for software sustainability, preservation and sharing, and can give further support to UCL researchers as required.

Congratulations to everyone involved in reaching this incredible milestone, and let’s continue to push the boundaries of open access and research sharing at UCL!

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!