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Locating Gray Literature: Conferences, Technical Reports


"Gray literature" is a term for the mass of information that falls outside the mainstream of published journal and monograph literature. This page describes some of the more commonly cited conference publications and tech reports in chemistry and chemical engineering. (Patents are also often considered part of the gray literature, but are covered on a separate page.)

Conferences

ACS Abstracts of Papers


The American Chemical Society publishes abstracts of papers to be presented at technical sessions of the ACS Spring and Fall National Meetings.
  • Abstracts from the current meeting are available on the ACS National Meetings web site. Go to the Technical Program Archive for abstracts from past meetings back to 2004.

  • Abstracts since the late 1990s are included in SciFinder and Web of Science. In Chemical Abstracts the title was historically abbreviated as: "Abstr. Pap. Am. Chem. Soc."; and more recently appears as: "Abstracts of Papers, [N]th ACS National Meeting, [place], [date]".
    The Full Text link in SciFinder leads nowhere, because there is no full text.

  • 2006-11 : the abstracts were published on CD-ROM, available on Reserves. In 2007 the title changed to Abstracts of scientific papers.

  • 1937-2005: Abstracts of papers - American Chemical Society are available as printed volumes in the library, shelved in the journal stacks. No abstracts were published prior to 1937.

  • Unless a paper was also published as a preprint from one of the Divisions listed below, or as a postprint within a separate proceedings volume, there are no published versions of the full papers -- the abstract is all there is. You have to contact the authors for more information, or search SciFinder for later articles based on a meeting presentation.

ACS Division Preprints


Three technical divisions of the American Chemical Society currently publish electronic preprints of papers in advance of national meetings.
Division Web Access UT Archival Holdings
ENFL: Energy & Fuels Preprints* 2012- (Full text restricted to Division members) CD-ROM: 2012-
ENVR: Environmental Chemistry Division Preprints Extended Abstracts
(ceased 2008)		 2004-08 (not subscribed) Print: 1973-99 (incomplete)
CD-ROM: 2000-06
FUEL: Fuel Chemistry Preprints*
(ceased 2012) 		2001-12 (Full text restricted to Division members)
Web Archive, 1957-2004 (open access)		 Print: 1960-2002
CD-ROM: 2003-12
PETR: Petroleum Preprints*
(ceased 2012) 		2002-2012 U.T. restricted Print: 1942-2005
CD-ROM: 2006-09
PMSE: Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering** 2001-current U.T. restricted Print: 1983-2001
CD-ROM: 2002-07
POLY: Polymer Preprints 2000-current U.T. restricted Print: 1962-2004
CD-ROM: 2005-09
* The FUEL and PETR divisions merged into the new Energy and Fuels Division (ENFL) in 2012. The former divisions published their respective FUEL and PETR preprints for the Spring 2012 (243rd) meeting, and launched ENFL preprints with the Fall 2012 meeting. Access to ENFL preprints is currently only available to division members.
** Earlier titles of PMSE were: Organic coatings and applied polymer science proceedings (1982-83); Organic coatings and plastics chemistry (1978-81); Coatings and plastics preprints (1974-77); Papers presented - American Chemical Society, Division of Organic Coatings and Plastics Chemistry (1960-73).

ACS Symposia


Papers from selected topical symposia held at ACS meetings are later published as proceedings volumes.
  • ACS Symposium Series (1974-present, shelved in Book Stacks at QD 1 A447)
  • Advances in Chemistry Series (1950-1998, each volume classified separately in the book stacks)
Search for these volumes in the Library Catalog by series/volume number or by individual book title. While these series exist as e-books on the ACS platform, UT-Austin does not subscribe to this content electronically.

AIChE Meeting Papers


The American Institute of Chemical Engineers holds Spring and Annual meetings.
  • There is no comprehensive index or archive of AIChE meeting papers. Some papers are indexed in SciFinder or Engineering Index. The catalog of the Linda Hall Library lists some too.

  • From 1979 to 2000 selected papers were issued on microfiche, but these are not widely held in libraries; the UT Libraries do not own any. Consult with a librarian before trying to request a paper via interlibrary loan, because a request is not likely to be successful.

  • Proceedings of conferences since 2003 (including their various topical symposia) are a mix of abstracts and full papers that have been sold only on CD-ROM. The CDs are generally not held in libraries but may be purchased individually from the AIChE web site.

  • The AIChE Symposium Series (1971-2002) and its predecessor Chemical Engineering Progress Symposium Series (1951-71) published postprints of selected topical symposia from the AIChE meetings. The Chemistry Library holds complete runs of these series at TP 1 A488/5. These papers were fully indexed in SciFinder.

  • Some meeting papers may have appeared later as articles in AIChE Journal or other journals, sometimes with slightly different titles. Searching for the authors in SciFinder can reveal these revisions.

Electrochemical Society Proceedings

2005-current: The ECS Transactions U.T. restricted can be searched or browsed for conference papers from ECS national meetings.

Pre-2005: The ECS published print conference proceedings until 2005. These books are individually cataloged in the Library Catalog by conference name and title, under the series heading Proceedings (Electrochemical Society) plus a year/volume number. UT's holdings are mostly complete after 1988. If you have a reference to a paper such as

Proc. Electrochem. Soc. 97-12
search for this volume in the Catalog using keywords:
proceedings electrochemical 97 12

Other Tools


  • Search the conference name as an author or as keywords in the Library Catalog.
    Note: Libraries catalog the name of a conference as an author, not a title. So a paper cited as being in "Proc. 12th Int. Conf. Widget Technol., 1998" will, in the catalog record for the published proceedings, have its main author listed officially as "International Conference on Widget Technology (12th : 1998 : [place])" so that all such conferences can be listed together regardless of each one's actual title.

  • Search in WorldCat, using words from the full name of the conference as a conference name query.

  • Search the paper's author(s) or keywords in ISI's Conference Proceedings Citation Index-Science, which goes back to 1990. CPCI-S is part of the Web of Knowledge and can be searched in tandem with the Science Citation Index.

  • Search the paper's author(s) in an index database such as SciFinder, Engineering Index, or Google Scholar. While an unpublished conference paper will probably not be indexed, you might find a later journal article based on it. Work-in-progress is often presented at conferences and then later submitted to journals.

  • Search in Google or other engine. An author might have posted a copy of the paper or a slide presentation in an open repository or personal web site.

  • Science Conference Proceedings is a DOE portal database that provides access to conference proceedings (mainly abstracts and session listings) from various professional societies and national labs in the physical sciences.

  • Proceedings.com from Curran Associates is a vendor service that prints and sells hardcopy conference proceedings (not single papers) from many professional organizations that are otherwise available only in electronic formats or to members.

  • Try contacting the paper's authors. They might be willing to supply a copy.

  • The Georgia Tech Library has a useful guide to collections of society technical papers.

Technical Reports


Technical reports usually originate in federal government agencies, but may also come from academic institutions, state or foreign governments, and private firms and organizations. They contain results of research carried out in government labs or on government contracts or, in the case of private companies, for in-house, proprietary use. They are often cited in the literature and indexed in databases, yet in some cases they can be difficult to verify and obtain. 		Major U.S. government sources include:
  • Department of Defense (DOD)
  • Department of Energy (DOE and its predecessors the AEC, ERDA, etc.)
  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
  • NASA (and its predecessor NACA)
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly the National Bureau of Standards, NBS)
  • Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or NUREG)

Technical reports are usually referenced by author(s), title, and report number. Report number formats vary widely according to the issuing agency's own numbering system. Some examples:

  • EPA/600/S2-86/051 (EPA)
  • NASA-TM-111279 (NASA)
  • PB95-187282 (NTIS accession number)
  • AD-A417298 (DOD)
  • SAND-83-2301/2 (DOE)
Government tech reports are primarily distributed on microfiche. Some research libraries have large collections of these reports, while others have relatively few. UT's Engineering Library has extensive collections of NASA reports in print and on fiche, but does not have many reports from other agencies. Government tech reports are usually not listed in library catalogs. A few of them are now available on the web, but most are not. Consulting a librarian in advance may save you much time.

Here are some web sites that can help you track down tech reports and other gray information.

Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC)
Public access to bibliographic data and some full text of unclassified DoD documents and technical reports since 1974.

DOE Data Explorer
A metasearch tool for public DOE data collections (not tech reports per se) - such as computer simulations, numeric data files, figures and plots, interactive maps, multimedia, and scientific images - generated in the course of DOE-sponsored research in various disciplines.

DOE SciTech Connect star
This interface consolidates the content of the DOE Information Bridge and the Energy Citations Database, both of which are being phased out. The system contains over 2.5 million bibliographic records and over 313,000 full text reports from the Department of Energy (DOE), most of which are post-1991. SciTech Connect includes technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia, and data information sponsored by DOE through a grant, contract, cooperative agreement, or similar type of funding mechanism from the 1940s to today.

EPA Publications Source
Gateway to various EPA publication catalogs for online and printed documents and reports. See also EPA's NSCEP/NEPIS gateway to free digital and paper publications. Warning: EPA documents can be very difficult to find! (For more information on EPA analytical methods see the Analytical Chemistry pathfinder.)

NASA Technical Reports Server
The NTRS collects scientific and technical information from NASA's technical report servers and non-NASA sites using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. It is not a comprehensive index of NASA reports, however. This site now also includes NACA aerospace reports from NASA's predecessor agency (1917-58).

NIST/NBS Catalog
The online catalog of the NIST library provides access to selected report series that have been digitized.

NTIS
The National Technical Information Service is the primary clearinghouse for government technical reports. Their web catalog lists reports since 1964. However, the records include only author and title and lack report numbers, abstracts, and agency information, making this free version of limited usefulness. If you need a search of a more complete NTIS database contact a librarian. Individual reports must be purchased directly from NTIS and can't be requested via interlibrary loan.

Science.gov
A search engine covering nearly 2,000 federal government web sites and databases.

TRAIL: Technical Report Archive and Image Library
A pilot collaborative project to digitize selected federal technical reports issued prior to 1975.

More Info about Tech Reports

UT Engineering Library Technical Reports

Stanford Engineering Library

Virtual Tech Reports Center (Univ. of Maryland)
The institutions listed on this site provide either full text reports, or searchable extended abstracts of their technical reports on the Web. This site contains links to technical reports, preprints, reprints, dissertations, theses, and research reports of all kinds, mostly non-governmental. Some meta-sites are listed by subject categories, as well as by institution.