Cryptology ePrint Archive

Cryptology ePrint Archive
Name	Cryptology ePrint Archive
Established	2000
Type	Preprint repository
Discipline	Cryptography
Country	United Kingdom
Hosted by	IACR

Cryptology ePrint Archive The Cryptology ePrint Archive is an electronic preprint repository for research in Cryptography, operated under the auspices of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. It serves as a rapid-distribution venue for work by scholars associated with institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Cambridge, and ETH Zurich. The Archive complements conferences including CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, TCC, and PKC while intersecting with researchers from labs like IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Google Research, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

History

The Archive was launched in the year 2000 following initiatives by members of RSA Conference-adjacent communities and contributors affiliated with IACR. Early development involved academics from Weizmann Institute of Science and Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, alongside practitioners from Bell Labs and AT&T Labs. Its growth paralleled the rise of influential results presented at venues such as Eurocrypt 2001 and Crypto 2002, and milestones like the publication of lattice-based primitives by researchers linked to NTRU and Learning with Errors proponents at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory. Over time the Archive became a recognized precursor platform for award-winning work acknowledged by prizes such as the Gödel Prize, Turing Award winners' citations, and accolades from bodies like ACM and IEEE.

Organization and Operations

Administrative oversight is provided by the International Association for Cryptologic Research with technical hosting handled by affiliates in the United Kingdom and cooperating institutions including University College London and University of Bristol. Editorial management has involved volunteers and appointed officers who coordinate with program committees of CRYPTO, EUROCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, CHES, and PKC. The Archive interoperates with indexing services such as arXiv, DBLP, Google Scholar, Scopus, and library systems at Bibliothèque nationale de France and British Library. Governance draws on precedents from repositories like arXiv and institutional policies from MIT Libraries and Stanford Libraries.

Submission and Publication Process

Authors affiliated with institutions like Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Columbia University, University of Oxford, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and Peking University may submit manuscripts that are time-stamped and assigned identifiers. The Archive supports submissions from researchers connected to labs such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories while respecting intellectual-property norms articulated by entities like European Patent Office and United States Patent and Trademark Office. Submissions undergo minimal technical moderation for format and scope rather than peer review, a model similar to early stages of bioRxiv and SSRN. Authors often update preprints in response to feedback from conference peer reviewers at venues including Usenix Security Symposium, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, NDSS, and Real World Crypto Symposium.

Content and Scope

The Archive hosts material across subfields involving contributors from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory-adjacent groups and academic departments such as those at University of Waterloo, McGill University, University of Toronto, Imperial College London, Royal Holloway, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Content ranges from theoretical advances connecting to work by researchers like those at Institute for Advanced Study and IAS, to applied studies by teams at Cisco Systems and Intel Labs. Topics link to developments in primitives and protocols discussed in papers related to RSA, Diffie–Hellman, Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Homomorphic Encryption, Post-Quantum Cryptography, Lattice-Based Cryptography, Multivariate Cryptography, Hash Functions, Symmetric-Key Cryptography, Authentication Protocols, Secure Multiparty Computation, Oblivious Transfer, Blockchain research from groups at Ethereum Foundation, Hyperledger, and consensus studies referencing Nakamoto, as well as quantum-cryptanalytic studies from teams at Google Quantum AI, IBM Quantum, and D-Wave Systems.

Impact and Reception

The Archive accelerated dissemination of breakthroughs by authors affiliated with Tel Aviv University, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Seoul National University, National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University, and Zhejiang University, influencing citations and follow-up work at conferences including Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, and workshops like PKC Workshop and SCN. It has been lauded by scholars from Princeton, Cornell University, Duke University, and Brown University for enabling rapid feedback cycles, while also drawing scrutiny from legal offices at European Commission and funding agencies such as National Science Foundation and European Research Council concerning preprint policy and disclosure. Notable papers first appearing in the Archive later shaped standards developed by groups like IETF and influenced cryptanalysis reported by teams at National Institute of Standards and Technology and Center for Applied Cryptographic Research.

Access and Search Features

The Archive provides searchable metadata and full-text access used by indexing platforms including Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, CiteSeerX, CrossRef, and university repositories at University of Melbourne and University of Sydney. Users from institutions such as Stanford, Oxford, UCLA, University of Michigan, and ETH Zurich leverage keyword, author, and identifier searches; integration with bibliographic tools like Zotero, EndNote, and Mendeley is common. Mirror and backup arrangements have involved partnerships with computing centers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Cornell University to ensure persistence and discoverability across scholarly infrastructures.

Category:Cryptography