Since the Szilárd library’s early days, one of the core librarians’ tasks was curating EMBL publications.

Research scientists at EMBL work on a wide range of biological topics and publish scientific outputs as variety of publication types: research articles, preprints, reviews, book chapters, letters, comments. Publications are deriving from collaborations within different EMBL groups, and also with universities, scientific institutes and consortia from EMBL member-states and worldwide.

In our CRIS (Current Research Management System), there are 18192 publications published by EMBL authors since 1979, and majority of them are listed at EMBL Research Publication page.

Yet, even more EMBL publications are kept in the Szilárd library in the paper form, dating back to 1973.

First volume of EMBL publications comprises of 10 reprints published from 1973 to 1975, carefully curated with author index.

EMBL publications were collected in paper form and bound until 1999, when the number of published articles reached 14 bound volumes.

After 1999, papers were not bound in volumes anymore, due to the high publishing production and the move to digital curation. Librarians started using software tool for publication management, and later on, Europe PMC becomes digital institutional repository for EMBL.

Each year librarians are reviewing EMBL research publications data that are further used in different reports and analysis across EMBL and member states. Currently for the year 2024 there are 733 curated EMBL publications in our CRIS.

Indeed, it was a long way to get from 10 to 733 publications in one reporting round!