About the Server

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.

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arXiv is a trademark of Cornell University, used under license. This license should not be understood to indicate endorsement of content on engrXiv by Cornell University or arXiv.

Terms and Conditions

General Information

engrXiv accepts all types of manuscript, including but not limited to systematic reviews, hypotheses, ‘negative’ results, and data and methods papers. We publish two major types of article: (1) Preprints of articles in parallel to traditional journal submissions. (2) Previously published articles that you wish to make Open Access. Note that preprint publication does not replace publishing with journals, and we recommend authors to use the SHERPA/RoMEO service to check journal preprint policies. All submissions will go through a basic moderation process to check for conformation with these guidelines, as described below. All preprints can be updated with the postprint version or author-accepted manuscript. Please check for journal compliance and embargo periods where needed.

Please note that preprints are not formally peer reviewed. When re-using them, and especially when citing, this status should be clearly marked. Please exercise the same care and judgment you would use for any research output when it comes to the re-use of preprints. We strongly encourage community interaction through commenting and sharing of preprints.

Purpose of Moderation

engrXiv accepts scholarly work from across the engineering field, broadly defined, that is plausibly categorized and for which authors are correctly identified, and which authors have the legal right to share. We do not assess the quality of the work or verify copyright status. The appearance of work is an invitation to the public and scholarly community to share, review, discuss, and evaluate it (and its linked or associated research materials); acceptance is not a statement about research quality or copyright status. engrXiv thus empowers individuals, communities, and institutions to develop their own criteria, announcements, journals, lists, and analyses of scholarly work.

Moderation Policy

engrXiv accepts papers at any stage of the publication process. We moderate papers that are submitted to the service before they appear publicly. Subject to volume demands, we expect to review each paper submitted for moderation within 3 business days.

The engrXiv moderation process accepts papers that:

  1. Are scholarly content. This includes original research, reviews, essays, critiques and comments on other work. Work on engrXiv is either research or engages with research.

  2. Are in a research area that we support. We accept work in the broad spectrum of engineering disciplines.

  3. Are plausibly categorized. We allow authors to select their own categories from our subject taxonomy, but check whether there are obvious errors or categorizations that lack plausibility.

  4. Comply with copyright law. Authors are obligated to share only that work they have the right to share and are responsible for compliance with all copyright law as per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Safe Harbor provisions. Actively affirming this is part of the submission process for each paper uploaded. We are not responsible for screening or reviewing content with regard to copyright status. Repeated offenders for copyright violations will have their account deleted from the platform. Claims of copyright infringement should be emailed to the director at director@engrxiv.org.

  5. Are in languages that we can moderate. We welcome work submitted in any language and will do our best to review it adequately according to our policy. As described in our FAQ, we ask that non-English submission include an English title and abstract.

Moderation Procedure

Work will be reviewed by a moderator before appearing publicly on engrXiv. If something is rejected, the moderator will include a description of the reason. Work that does not pass moderation will not be displayed as part of engrXiv. Authors are free to resubmit such work after addressing the issues raised by the moderator. Authors also may contact info@engrxiv.org to discuss or appeal a rejection.

Author Agreement

I grant engrXiv and the platform hosting the server the non-exclusive rights to reproduce, publicly display and publish my article and any related content deposited with it (the "Work") in any format in perpetuity.

I warrant as follows:

(a) that I have sufficient copyright ownership in the Work and/or permission to grant the rights in this agreement; and

(b) that the Work does not infringe any copyrights, trademarks or proprietary rights, nor does it violate any other rights of any person or third party.

I understand that once the Work is deposited in engrXiv, a full bibliographic citation to the Work will remain visible in perpetuity, even if the Work is updated or removed, and that engrXiv reserves the right to reclassify or reject any submission.

Withdrawing a Preprint

Withdrawal requests should be rare and only made when absolutely necessary, such as for legal compliance with publisher copyright policies. Papers that infringe on copyrights will be removed in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Claims of copyright infringement should be emailed to the director at director@engrxiv.org.

Preprints hosted on engrXiv are part of the scholarly record. Preserving the scholarly record is our obligation to the scholarly community. In most circumstances, editing the preprint to upload a new version or to edit the metadata is the preferred course of action. If the author withdraws a preprint prior to moderator acceptance, the preprint will be immediately removed from the moderation queue and will leave no public record. If the preprint has already been posted publicly, after moderator approval of the submission, withdrawal then requires moderator approval and will only be granted under extenuating circumstances. The requestor must provide a reason for requesting withdrawal, which will be considered by the moderator and made public if approved by the moderator. If approved, the preprint file will no longer be available. However, basic metadata including the title, authors, and the reason for withdrawal submitted by the corresponding author may remain public.

Authors who post papers on engrXiv are notified, during the submission process, that the “submission is permanent and cannot be withdrawn.” Authors also are required to confirm that all contributors have agreed to share the paper, and that they have the right to share it. (All co-authors have the same rights to distribute a copyrighted work, unless a subsequent agreement has intervened, so an objection to the posting by a co-author is not the basis for removal.)