HAL (short for Hyper Articles en Ligne) is an open archive where authors can deposit scholarly documents from all academic fields. Documents in HAL are uploaded either by one of the authors with the consent of the others or by an authorized person on their behalf. An uploaded document does not need to have been published or even to be intended for publication. As an open access repository, HAL complies with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI-PMH) as well as with the European OpenAIRE project. HAL was started in 2001 by Franck Laloë, initially at École normale supérieure (ENS), and was later transferred to the (CCSD); other French institutions, such as Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria), have joined the system. While it is primarily directed towards French academics, participation is not restricted to them.