Materials Science and Engineering: Preprint servers

A preprint is a version of a research manuscript published before peer review.  Typically these documents and made freely available on large databases - preprint servers or repositories.  Publishing a preprint aims to speed up the process of disseminating research, to generate a conversation around research and gain feedback from others. 

Preprints have a number of benefits:

• they enable researchers to establish an early claim for your research findings;
• they signal to colleagues and other researchers your research interests and encourage collaboration and feedback;
• you can publish the outputs such as posters, protocols, papers, and presentations that are not suitable for journal publication;
• they provide evidence of authors productivity as well as improve their visibility;
• preprints are open access, anyone can see your preprint and they are easily shared or discoverable using web search tools such as CORE and SHARE;
• preprints are the fastest way to share and disseminate your research; 
• easy access usually means more citations;