A few people have asked the question, “Why is it called engrXiv?” This is a great question and the answer requires a little backstory.

First is the “engr” part. While there is not really a standard to broadly accepted abbreviation for engineering, engr. is often used and can be found in places like course prefixes at universities. Therefore, engr is a good option to avoid confusion with eng., which is sometimes used as an abbreviation for English.

Next is the “rXiv” part. This form of spelling for the word archive is best known in its use on the website arXiv. arXiv is a preprint server for physics, mathematics, computer science, nonlinear sciences, quantitative biology and statistics that started in 1991. Though commonly written with a capital letter “X” for ease of typing, the pronunciation uses a Greek letter chi (χ), stemming from its use in TeX (or 𝜏𝜀𝜒), the typesetting system. The convention of using this spelling has been carried on in the preprint server realm by entities such as bioRxiv and SocArXiv.

Putting this all together, we took these two parts and smashed them together, while eliminating the double “r”, to form engrXiv, pronounced “Engineering Archive.” We hope that with time as the engrXiv community grows, the name and pronunciation will become commonplace and not require explanation.

To help avoid confusion, if you tell your colleagues to visit www.engineeringarchive.org they will also find their way to engrXiv. ;-)