ISGuides: EGIS (Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society): Reports

Technical reports

Technical reports are written by engineers/researchers about their designs, projects and other work. They are often more detailed than a journal article, but are not normally peer-reviewed. Technical reports can be good sources of practical information for using in your coursework and future employment. Reports from the USA are often easier to find that reports from the UK, particularly if the project was funded by the US government.

Here are some sources of technical reports:

NASA Technical Reports Server
Source of scientific and technical information produced by or funded by NASA. The NACA collection covers 1915 to 1958, and the NASA STI collection is from 1958 onwards.

OnePetro This link opens in a new window
Providing access to over 200,000 items of technical literature for the oil and gas exploration and production industry. Provided by the Society of Petroleum Engineers on behalf of 21 publishing partners. Content dating from 1885 to present.

Subject Coverage:
Engineering, Petroleum technology, Marine technology

Sources:
Book and eBooks, Conference papers, Journal articles (academic), Reports
Includes Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) Papers Online (covers publications from 1991 to 2005).

Full text availability:
This is a full text resource.

IBM Technical Papers
Technical reports written by members of the IBM Research community.
Sometimes the IBM website only has the abstract for the paper. This is often because the paper has been published elsewhere, and may be available from a different Heriot-Watt resource. Try searching Discovery for the title of the paper you are looking for, or ask the library.
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Technical Reports
HP Technical Reports cover computing, network security, product design, printing, etc. Many of these are available in full-text online.

Osti.gov This link opens in a new window
Osti.gov is the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technological Information. It searches DOE funded science, technology, and engineering research and is a useful resource for any energy or renewable-related projects.

Osti.gov includes "SciTech Connect" and the "Energy Citations Database", which can't be searched separately anymore.

NATO Science and Technology Organization Technical Reports
Defense and security related from NATO.
AERADE Reports Archive
Older aerospace and defence reports.
AERADE gives online access to the reports of:
The Aeronautical Research Council (ARC) - British aeronautical agency, which published reports from 1909-1980.
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Precursor of NASA. Published reports from 1917-1958.

Conferences

Academics, researchers and professionals often present their research at conferences. This will usually be an oral presentation. However, there may be 'conference proceedings' which publish the written papers associated with the presentations. These are called conference papers. Conference papers are a good way to find out about current research, which may not yet have been published in a journal paper. Unlike journal papers, it is unlikely that the paper has been through a peer review process.

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Digital Library This link opens in a new window
ACM and ACM Special Interest Groups (SIGs) sponsor more than 170 computing conferences, workshops, and symposia around the world.
IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
Includes, and can limit to, over 9,500 conferences.
ProQuest: all databases and collections This link opens in a new window
Includes, and can limit to, over 120 conferences.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Includes, and can limit to, over 550 conferences.
Web of Science [previously called Web of Knowledge] This link opens in a new window
Includes (and can limit to):
Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Science (1990 to date)
Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Science & Humanities (1990 to date)

Many of our other journal databases, also include conferences:

EGIS journal databases