The last few years has seen rapid growth in the number of digital repositories, which fall into three main categories:

• Institutional repositories
• Funder-specific repositories
• Discipline-specific repositories

A challenge faced by all digital repositories is that many traditional journals only allow deposition of the author's manuscript version of the article, not the final, 'official' version. Additionally, an embargo period of 6 or 12 months may apply before the research article can be made openly available.

al-Uqud: Journal of Islamic Economics allows the final version of all published research articles to be placed in any digital archive immediately on publication. Authors are free to archive articles themselves, but in many cases this is not necessary, as al-Uqud: Journal of Islamic Economics can automatically supply a feed of open access articles to any repository that wishes to receive it.