2017 has been a great year here at engrXiv. After a soft launch in mid-2016, the service rolled out in full in December 2016. At time of writing, we have published 136 engineering articles that are free to read and download. Over the last year we have also implemented a number of new features including being indexed by Google Scholar and the issuing of DOIs for all engrXiv submissions. There is more to come in 2018! Coming shortly, be on the lookout for enhancements to article level analytics and metadata options. A little further down the road we are looking to implement a commenting system.

It is becoming increasingly common that publishers are open to the posting of preprints prior to publication and often there are provisions for posting the author version of a manuscript after publication as well. While some publisher’s policies could use greater clarity, we expect to see greater improvement in this area through 2018 as authors push for more control over their scholarship and retention of more of their rights.

Currently only ~17% of published work in engineering is openly accessible. With your help, let’s make 2018 the year that open scholarship in engineering really takes off!