They are prepared for internal or wider distribution by many organizations, most of which lack the extensive editing and printing facilities of commercial publishers.
Another case where a technical report may be produced is when more information is produced for an academic paper than is acceptable or feasible to publish in a peer-reviewed publication; examples of this include in-depth experimental details, additional results, or the architecture of a computer model.
Researchers may also publish work in early form as a technical report to establish novelty, without having to wait for the often long production schedules of academic journals.
Technical reports are considered "non-archival" publications, and so are free to be published elsewhere in peer-reviewed venues with or without modification.
Technical reports used to be made available in print, but are now more commonly published electronically (typically in PDF), whether on the Internet or on the originating organization's intranet.