Apologies for being a little late in getting this year-end summary post out there. The year 2023 has been one of stability at Engineering Archive. The server has now settled in to the new software, Open Preprint Systems, and our authors seem to be getting more familiar with the submission workflow. As a result, we have seen some moderate growth in the number of submissions in 2023 as compared with 2022. We currently average around 40 new preprints per month, which garners around 500 preprints annually. This year, we have seen some uptick in the submission of citation spam, which effectively consists of minimal effort papers with an excessive number of self-citations. These are screened manually, although of course some do occasionally slip through the cracks.
This year we were also able to remove one of the pain points in the preprint authoring workflow at OPS, the versioning of posted preprints. With the assistance of a plugin developed by Lepidus Tecnologia, authors can now both create and submit for review new versions of their preprints. This is a drastic improvement over the previous manual method of needing to notify engrXiv moderators when new preprint versions were ready to post. As the plugin is open source, this new workflow is available to all who use Open Preprint systems thanks to the financial support of Open Engineering Inc.
The continued operation of the server and our ability to make improvements such as just described is only possible due to the financial support of the Engineering Archive Membership Circle. The Membership Circle creates the opportunity for institutions, libraries, and other organizations to support the sustainability of the server through a $500 annual contribution. Many of our supporting libraries are in their 6th year of keeping the server running!
We hope you’ll keep in touch via social media. Find us on the fediverse at our Mastodon account @engrxiv@scicomm.xyz. While we still annouce new preprints on Twitter via automated means, that account is no longer actively monitored.