In a number of well-defined scientific areas, such as High Energy Physics and Radio Astronomy, with coherent research communities, and established communications, there has grown up a practice of disseminating preprints of articles before publication in a recognised primary journal. This "pre-print culture" provides a kind of semi-formal mutual exchange of information, where the pre-print has become the chief medium for transmitting new research findings . Prior to publication researchers send a digital copy (unrefereed) to an organisation who maintain a pre-print archive on a server. These are then available for free access via the Internet.
CERN
The European Centre for Nuclear Research - has one such pre-print
archive for preprints covering the last twelve months. Focus is
on high energy physics. Older preprints can be available through
the library OPAC - ALICE.
The International School
for Advanced Studies
SISSA - Trieste has another pre-print archive. SISSA provides the
option of allowing you to request an e-mail list of titles,
authors and abstracts of all the preprints in a specified subject
field as and when they arrive.
Los Alamos physics information service provides a WWW server for automated physics e-print archives on xxx.lanl.gov e-Print archive.
SLAC Spires : HEP preprint database is another preprint database for high energy physics.