Technical Reports
What are Technical Reports?
Technical reports describe the progress or results of scientific or technical research and development. These may include national or international reports by university departments, institutes, private industry, or government agencies and laboratories.
Issuing (funding) agencies may or may not make reports publicly available and some charge for copies of their reports. Publication and dissemination of technical reports has never been centrally coordinated; therefore, they can be particularly difficult to identify and locate.
NOTE: Good advice is to contact the
Engineering Library if you need information about finding and obtaining technical reports.
Technical Report Numbers
Technical reports usually appear as part of a numbered series from the issuing agency.
These numbers are important and are often the easiest way to find a specific
report or document. Each agency has its own numbering system,
however technical report number systems usually include the following
elements:
- agency, society, or company delineator
- year code
- specific number for each report
Some examples of numbers are:
- NASA-TM-111279
- N96-29630/6GAR
- EPA/456/R-99/002
- FHWA-RD-97-028 2
- SAE 2001-1096
Databases
Databases are a good place to begin to identify technical
reports by topic, report number, author, etc.
- Aerospace & High Technology - The database also covers technology development and applications in complementary and supporting fields such as chemistry, geosciences, physics, communications, and electronics. In addition to periodic literature, the database also includes coverage of reports issued by NASA, other U.S. government agencies, international institutions, universities, and private firms.
- TRANSPORT - Divided into 2 files: newer and older. Contains the TRIS file of the Transportation Research Board as well as the OECD International Road Research Documentation Database and the TRANSDOC file of European Conference of Ministers of Transport
Websites
- National Technical Information Service - NTIS - The primary clearinghouse for government technical reports, NTIS is the place to search and order reports. The free web database indexes reports since 1990. Consult a librarian about searching NTIS databases for older reports, since this is not free. Generally, these reports must be purchased directly from NTIS and can't be requested via interlibrary loan.
- GrayLIT Network - Developed by the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), in collaboration with DOD/DTIC, NASA, and EPA, the GrayLIT Network is a portal for technical report information generated through federally funded research and development projects.
- Department of Energy (DOE) Information Bridge- provides access to full-text DOE research and development reports produced by the DOE and the DOE contractor research and development community in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy, and other topics. The current collection includes reports that have been received and processed since 1995.
- DOE Virtual Library of Energy Science and Technology - The Library includes three vast virtual resources for DOE web patrons covering each of the three main ways by which scientists communicate their findings: gray literature, preprints, and journal literature
- Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Scientific and Technical Information Network (STINET)
DTIC Technical Report collection includes all unclassified, unlimited government- sponsored technical report citations since 1974. Some reports are available full-text online. The scope of DTIC collection includes areas normally associated with Department of Defense research; however, since DoD interests are widespread, the collection also contains information relating to hard sciences such as biological and medical sciences; environmental pollution and control; and the behavioral and social sciences.
- Energy Citations Database - It includes bibliographic records of literature in disciplines of interest to DOE such as chemistry, physics, materials, environmental science, geology, engineering, mathematics, climatology, oceanography, computer science and related disciplines.
- EPA Publications Source - Gateway to various EPA publication catalogs for online and printed documents and reports. Warning: EPA documents can be very difficult to find! For more information on EPA analytical methods see the Analytical Chemistry pathfinder.
- EPA - NEPIS- NEPIS is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Environmental Publications Internet Site. Search, view, and print from a collection of of over
6,000 technical and public information documents. NOTE: A limited number of EPA reports are cataloged and can be found in the Library Catalog.
- Fire Research Information Services (FRIS) - FRIS is a resource both to the NIST Building and Fire Research Laboratory (BRLF) staff and to fire protection engineers, scientists, and fire service personnel around the world.
- Los Alamos Technical Reports and Publications - Over 10,000 Los Alamos technical reports are now
available in electronic form and can be accessed
through the Library's online catalog. These include the LA-
(formal) report series, LALP- series, and LA-UR
series. These reports
go back to 1943 and were scanned from paper or microfiche.
- Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library (NCSTRL) - is an international collection of computer science technical reports made available for non-commercial use from a number of participating institutions.
- NASA Technical Reports Server - The NTRS collects scientific and technical information from NASA's technical report servers and non-NASA sites. NOTE: The Engineering Library has a large collection of paper NACA and NASA and AGARD reports in its microfiche collection.
- Yahoo - Technical Reports- List of Internet sites with technical reports, primarily in the area of computer science, but also a good site for locating company technical reports and European sites.
- Virtual Tech Reports Center - The institutions listed on this site provide either full text reports, or searchable extended abstracts of their technical reports on the Web.
