LibGuides: Free Engineering Information Resources: Preprint Servers and Institutional Repositories

Preprint Servers

Preprint servers are an important part of the open science infrastructure. Preprints provide access to scholarly or scientific papers that have not yet undergone the peer review process. The preprints are available for free and may eventually link to or be replaced by the final, published version of the article. The preprint servers below are commonly used in engineering disciplines.

engrXiv
engrXiv (Engineering Archive) is dedicated to the dissemination of engineering knowledge quickly and efficiently. engrXiv was launched in beta in July 2016 under the direction of Devin R. Berg, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. The server is operated by Open Engineering Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit, which provides financial support for server operations.
arXiv
arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.
TechRxiv
TechRxiv (pronounced "tech archive") is an open, moderated preprint server for unpublished research in the areas of engineering, computer science, and related technology.

Institutional Repositiories

An institutional repository (IR) is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution, definition from Wikipedia. IRs can be an important source of grey literature and openly available versions of journal articles. Almost all IRs are indexed by major search engines and Google Scholar and will come up in result lists.

Resources for finding Institutional Repositories include:

ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
- The aim of ROAR is to promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the world.
OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories)
- Directory of academic open access repositories.