Does the Publish Date control the Preview option visibility for Specialization?

We've had an issue in OLC wherein the Preview option (Actions > Preview) is greyed out for newly created specializations. After a brief investigation, we observed that if the Publish Start Date is future dated, the Preview option will be unavailable. We tested changing it to the present or earlier dates and the option becomes visible.

Can you confirm if this is an expected functionality? It's a bit weird since we expect the Learning Specialist who created the specialization to be able to preview even without making the spec available to learners. Can you provide more context?

Thank you and have a great day!