I have a couple of small research projects that I have recently made some progress on and gotten (I think) useful preliminary results. It is not enough for a peer-reviewed paper yet but I anticipate it will at some point in the future. At the moment, I need to focus on other work to make progress on my main projects.
My question is this: Suppose I want to put out some preliminary work that people in my field may find useful. Would posting a preliminary paper on an official preprint server that issues a DOI (i.e. engrXiv, Preprints, etc. - arXiv does not accept papers in my area) or writing a technical report be more useful? There is no guarantee I will have time to return to these projects in the near future. I want others to read the work freely and widely but I also want to protect any intellectual property here so I cannot just post the work on a random website - there needs to be some "official" status that other people may be able to build upon.
For technical reports, my university publishes formal technical reports in the College of Engineering library repository. Either way (preprint or tech report), the work will be indexed in Google Scholar and be citable. In my field, formal technical reports count as minor publications (equivalent to conference papers) and preprints may set the expectation that a paper is complete and in-review.
Advice and discussion of the pros and cons of both approaches would be appreciated.
Dear Albert E. Patterson my take is that you be better safe than sorry and take the conservative approach.
Hi,
Both technical reports and preprints are considered to be grey literature. If you choose to publish it as a preprint, it is expected that will have a continuation, that is, the preprint will evolve in the near future into a formal paper. If you choose to publish it a a technical report, then it depends on the UIUC School of engineering policy considering this type of publication. In my institution technical reports are usually not open to the public and if a researcher would like to use it, he has to ask for it in an inter library loan. I would say that technical report is a more closed publication, while preprint is more open to the public. So , it depends on your future plans for this publication.
Thank you for the feedback - very good perspective. At my university, I can publish the technical reports on the institutional repository either as private documents or as open-access with a CC-BY license as I wish. They are reviewed by the engineering library staff and approved before posting.
The expected continuation of the preprint is an issue for sure. If I am not sure that I will soon come back to the work, then maybe technical report is a wiser choice.
Hi, I think that the reflection in your last posting is appropriate to the case you raise. On the other hand: does the fact of publishing your work as technical reports prevent further development and publication by other means? Maybe you could review the articles acceptance policies of some journals in which you might be interested to publish (regarding the reception of articles based on preliminary works that had some degree of public dissemination). Maybe that will help you to make a decision that suits what you want to achieve.
As long as it institute publication is in open access, I feel it is equally on par with preprint. However, the circulation or access figures may be much less. It will b nice to publicise ur publication to enable ur report for public use and review. Even, ur institute publication shall get publicity. Recognition for work in different ways is important.
These are excellent answers. Thanks for giving your opinions on this.
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