The G.U. No. 191 of 18th August 2006 reports the DPR of 3rd May 2006, "regulation laying down rules on legal deposit of cultural documents intended for public use", implementing Law No 106 of 15th April 2004. This law replaced legislation which regulated the compulsory deposit, which dated back to 1939, partly modified by Decree Law n º 660 of 1945.

The substantial innovation of the 2004 Law is that until now paper documents and publications were subject of obligation, while today the obligation is extended to all types of national publishing production "whatever the production process, publishing or broadcasting". They are therefore including digital publications, disseminated electronically and via web. The deposit covers all the different types of research products that have public dissemination.

The Regulations (Presidential Decree no. 252/2006) establishes, in fact, that: "The National Research Council defines special agreements with the parties required to deposit for the purposes of paragraph 3 of Article 6 of Law 106/2004 - art. 6, paragraph 1: "the parties who are under obligation to deposit are required to submit to the Central Library of the National Research Council copies of the documents,  from the same required, also in cumulative form, and closely related to the areas of science and technology ".

The Legal Deposit is, therefore, aimed at setting up the Italian archive of scientific publishing production, and to set up national bibliographic services of information and access to documents subject to legal deposit. To allow the achievement of these goals, the legal deposit specifically refers to:

• collection and storage of documents of scientific interest;
• production and dissemination of national bibliographic services;
• consultation and availability of such documents, in compliance with the rules on copyright and related rights.

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