This presentation was provided by Gerry Grenier of IEEE, during the NISO Event "Open Access: The Role and Impact of Preprint Servers," held November 14 - 15, 2019.

1. 1
Launching TechRxiv – a preprint server for
the engineering and computer science
communities
Gerry Grenier, Sr Director, Content Management
g.grenier@ieee.org
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
NFAIS Foresight Event “Open Access and the Potential Role/Impact of
Preprint Servers” – November 15, 2019

2. 2
IEEE at a glance
▶ World’s largest technical professional organization
▶ Mission: Advancement of Technology
▶ We meet our mission through
▪ Membership (~400,000)
▪ Members join one of 46 subject specific societies
▪ Standards (think wifi or 802.11 standards)
▪ Publisher of ~230,000 scholarly articles annually
▪ 150 highly-cited peer reviewed journals
▪ 1800 annual conferences

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Articles are organized into one of 16 high-level subject areas
Aerospace Bioengineering Communication,
Networking and
Broadcast
Technologies
Components,
Circuit Devices
and Systems
Computing and
Processing
Engineered
Materials,
Dielectrics and
Plasmas
Engineering
Profession
Fields, Waves,
and
Electromagnetics
General Topics
for Engineers
Geoscience Nuclear
Engineering
Photonics and
Electro optics
Power, Energy,
and Industrial
Applications
Robotics and
Control Systems
Signal
Processing and
Analytics
Transportation

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Why TechRxiv?
▶ IEEE Members, beginning in 2018, began to examine the preprint landscape
▶ Demand
▪ Authors still want publication in IEEE conferences & journals as stamp of
approval
▪ But they also want early attention (faster publication than peer review
allows, a platform where papers that are easy to discover)
▶ Possible directions
▪ Do nothing
▪ IEEE work with arXiv (automatic article linking, integrated submission, exchange
usage stats)
▪ Establish an IEEE preprint server

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Two solutions to our preprint strategy
▶ Continue our relationship with arXiv
▪ Four sections within arXiv, supported by IEEE Signal Processing Society
▪ Electrical Engineering and Systems Science
▪ Audio and Speech Processing
▪ Image and Video Processing
▪ Signal Processing
▪ Systems and Control
▶ Offer an IEEE preprint server
▪ With caveats:
▪ Don’t mandate its use for all publications
▪ Now is not the time for a high-cost experiment
▪ Launch by Q4 2019

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Build or Buy (“Rent”) was the first decision point
▶ Functionality set defined
▶ Build and Buy vendors identified
▶ Costs evaluated

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Functionality requirements presented to vendors
▶ Uptime – robust infrastructure
▶ Search – very basic full text search
▶ Registration for submitters and reviewers
▶ User administration control
▶ Simple submission to one of 16 taxonomy nodes
▪ Revisions allowed
▶ Simultaneous Submission to Peer Review systems
▶ Plagiarism detection
▶ DOI deposit
▶ Citation downloads

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Functionality requirements
▶ Statistics – geographic distribution of deposits and usage; Google analytics
▶ Licensing choice (CCBY)
▶ Link to final published paper if applicable
▶ Ability to remove any paper
▶ Simultaneous submission to peer-reviewed journal option
▶ Commenting (IEEE has not yet implemented that)
▪ Comments can be moderated

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Cost and schedule of a custom build were not acceptable
external partner strategy undertaken
▶ High six-figures, with recurring capital and operational costs
▪ Whether by internal staff or by external development group
▶ Platform-as-a-service was more attractive
▶ Preprint server technology is a commodity!

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Preprint server “platform as a service” options abound: Note
all vendors, we found, were equal and capable
▶ Atypon
▶ Figshare
▶ Research Square
▶ Center for Open Science
▶ Others, I suspect are out there
▶ After demos and interviews, IEEE chose figshare, based on prior business relationship
▪ Understand the vendor’s build process, your involvement in the process, and timing
▪ Be prepared to make features/schedule decisions

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The advantages of platform-as-a-service far outweighed
build
▶ Advantages
▪ Low cash outlay
▪ Preprint server offerings are ready-made – just add branding ( in most cases, as long as you stay within the
offered feature set)
▪ Adding features that are out-of-box, while possible, simply add cost and schedule
▪ Temper your expectations
▪ Zero on-going operational cost
▪ One time set-up fee
▪ Annual “maintenance fee”
▪ Speed-to-launch
▪ Six-months from contract to launch
▶ Disadvantage
▪ Some loss of features development control – look and feel, for example not very flexible
▪ Life in a multi-tenant framework can limit features development – need to accept that from the outset

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Preprint Server Development Checklist
▶ Grant copyright to the authors – offer choices as part of the submission process
▪ CC BY 4.0 (Attribution only) allows others to copy, reuse, adapt, and build upon your work, including for
commercial purposes, as long as the content is attributed to you.
▪ CC BY-SA 4.0 (Attribution-ShareAlike) allows others to copy, reuse, adapt, and build upon your work,
including for commercial purposes, as long as the content is attributed to you and the adapted work is
distributed under the same license as the original.
▪ CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike) allows others to copy, reuse, adapt, and build
upon your work for non-commercial purposes, as long as the content is attributed to you and the adapted
work is distributed under the same license as the original.
▪ CC0 1.0 (Public Domain Dedication) allows others to copy, reuse, adapt, and build upon your work for any
purpose without attribution; all your rights in the work are waived and the work is dedicated to the public
domain.
▶ Rights to statistics
▶ Right to data-mine the contributions
▶ Obtain domain name! Manage the DNS record

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Preprint Server Development Checklist
▶ Recruitment of “moderators”
▪ Staff positions or Subject Matter Experts (IEEE Members)?
▪ Turn-around demands
▪ Training and management of moderators requires staff time
▪ For example: We chose to assign papers to Subject Matter Experts, a feature not supported by our vendor
▪ IEEE staff member monitors submissions and assigns to proper Moderator
▪ Automating this process is considered a custom feature
▶ Management of the plagiarism check process – ie sift out false-positive high-scores
▶ Recruitment of a Scientific Advisory Board
▶ Footer page copy
▪ Submission guidelines, FAQ, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy
▶ Customer service – develop a strategy – we chose to route contacts through our normal customer
service process

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On-going support and development strategy
▶ Understand the cost of custom development
▶ Understand the development strategy process
▪ Features roadmap – timeline
▶ Customer support
▪ Portal with documentation, customer-posting area? Etc.