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I'm a civil engineer myself and found no options for depositing engineering related pre-print papers in any online repositories. Is there any easy solution to this? For example, academia.edu lets one upload their papers but other people must have account to download the paper which is kinda turn off.

In short, I want a repository like ArXiv from where people can download anonymously and also with easy submission procedure.

EDIT: This is about already published articles in journal or conferences, so that people can download the pre-print anonymously.

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  • I'm not sure what you're asking for. citeulike allows you to share bibliographies, and any submitted paper will be stored in the journal archive. Are you referring to an online storage site for whitepapers specific to engineering?
    – eykanal
    Commented May 15, 2012 at 17:56
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    Or do you want an open access repository like ArXiv?
    – JeffE
    Commented May 15, 2012 at 18:33
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    Related: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/84/…
    – Piotr Migdal
    Commented May 17, 2012 at 12:14
  • But it does not provide answer on Engineering needs
    – ShadowWarrior
    Commented May 17, 2012 at 12:20

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Update 2020: There is still no widely used preprint server for engineering articles.

  • There are (now?) a few engineering categories on arxiv, e.g. electrical and computer engineering. Everything that has anything to do with machine learning or data analysis is a good fit, anyway. I have uploaded a few biomedical signal processing papers on arxiv as well. See https://arxiv.org/ for the list of categories.
  • Very recently, IEEE introduced its own preprint server, "a preprint server for the global technology community": https://www.techrxiv.org/. I could imagine that with the backing of IEEE, this could become reasonably popular in some time.
  • Of the three preprint servers I mentioned below in 2016, https://engrxiv.org appears to be the only one that's still reasonably active.
  • https://www.preprints.org/subject/browse/engineering also appears to be reasonably active.

It appears that there is currently no widely used preprint server for engineering articles. Interestingly, there appears to be a bunch of platforms that have all been launched very recently, and which all target (among others) engineering preprints:

  • Launched in July 2016, there is now (currently only in a preliminary version) engrXiv, which is a dedicated preprint server for the engineering sciences. It is supported / advocated by the center for open science.
  • There is the Self-Journal of Science which provides an innovative, open peer review process and also allows for publication of preprints.
  • Finally, there is The Winnower which also provides a platform for an open peer review process.

Unfortunately, in all of these, activity is currently rather low, probably due to the novelty of these platforms. Time will show whether one of these will become really popular.

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I suspect the reason you're having difficult getting answers is because your goal is unclear from your question. The best way to have your work added to an online repository is to submit your work to a recognized engineering journal, such as one of the IEEE societies. If you don't want to support paid publishers, you could consider checking out the PLoS journals.

However, you have to recognize something fundamental about your work; from my experience, people doing serious research aren't trawling the web looking for information that happens to be placed on the internet that just happens to be related to their field of interest. Researchers overwhelmingly use journals to communicate, for the simple reason that journals provide a peer-review process, meaning that the content is vetted for accuracy, quality, and relevance. If you simply want to put your stuff online, get a blog, but if you want others to read it—particularly others recognized as leaders in the field—you will almost certainly want to submit to a journal. Most well-known researchers that I know wouldn't look to "online repositories", if they exist, simply because the signal to noise ratio is guaranteed to be far too high to be worth their time.

tl;dr - I'm not sure of your end goal. Consider submitting your results to be published (and added to the publisher's archive). Also, interesting discussion in comments; read them below.

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    "people doing serious research in any field aren't trawling the web... Researchers overwhelmingly use journals... Most well-known researchers wouldn't look to online repositories..." — Maybe in your field. I most definitely do trawl the web, and I do regularly look to online repositories. (I even help moderate one.) I don't overwhelmingly read journals; rather, I follow wherever the citations (and reverse citations) lead: journals, conference proceedings, monographs, technical reports, theses, the ArXiv, whatever. And I think my reading habits are pretty typical for my field.
    – JeffE
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 20:08
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    @JeffE - That's interesting. I've had my hand in a number of fields, including neuroscience, signal processing, biomedical engineering, and psychology, and from my experience, people in those fields don't do what you describe. Sure, they'll check interesting blogs to see what others are thinking and to browse hot topics, but not as a primary resource.
    – eykanal
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 20:14
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    Blogs are definitely good secondary resources, but that's not what I think the phrase "online repository" means. To me, it means ArXiv and other open-access preprint servers. For huge chunks of math and physics, and a somewhat smaller chunk of computer science, the ArXiv is the primary means for quickly disseminating research.
    – JeffE
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 20:20
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    In particular, I would emphatically amend your advice. If you want other people to read your work, put it on the web and submit it to a journal. Then when you get your referee reports and revise your paper, put the revision on the web. Not everyone who can use your work can afford to subscribe to journals, or wants to wait the extra months for your paper to reach the front of the publication queue.
    – JeffE
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 20:24
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    @JeffE - That may, in fact, be very misguided advice; I know that some journals will refuse to accept previously published results, and publishing your paper "on the web" as you suggest could disqualify your submission on that basis. I would be most interested in hearing from others on this topic.
    – eykanal
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 20:34
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I believe that you are looking exactly for this: http://www.preprints.org/subject/browse/engineering/civil_engineering

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the best source for scientific papers is American Society of Civil Engineers witch you can visit at: http://ascelibrary.org

second source is ICE Virtual Library at this address http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com

anyway, many publishers have journals in field of civil engineering, but as you said, most of them require subscription (personal or via university)

also, you can find some journals in Directory of Open Access Journals

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  • Please read the question first, then answer! Delete your answer before getting down voted.
    – ShadowWarrior
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 15:24
  • you better understand carefully what you wanna ask. you asked about a database for civil engineering articles first. then you edited yours. anyway you better get a way to access to databases which I recommend to you. see gigapaper.net
    – Mohsen Sheriff
    Commented May 21, 2012 at 22:35

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