Elusive No Longer? Increasing Accessibility to the Federally Funded Technical Report Literature

Abstract

Since World War II, the United States has been actively pursuing scientific research and development. Over 50 years later, the federally funded technical report literature, the results from the nation's R&D, has grown extensively. However, this vast technical report literature has not had effective methods of dissemination during these decades to provide easy access to its riches. The technology of the late 20th and early 21st century is enabling more effective access to this literature. This article will examine some of the reasons why effective access to federally funded technical reports has been elusive and will illustrate some new technologies that are greatly improving access to this literature.     

Maximizing the results of federally-funded research and development through knowledge management: A strategic imperative for improving U.S. competitiveness

Federally-funded research and development (R&D) represents a significant annual investment (approximately $79 billion in fiscal year 1996) on the part of U.S. taxpayers. Based on the results of a 10-year study of knowledge diffusion in the U.S. aerospace industry, the authors take the position that U.S. competitiveness will be enhanced if knowledge management strategies, employed within a capability-enhancing U.S. technology policy framework, are applied to diffusing the results of federally-funded R&D. In making their case, the authors stress the importance of knowledge as the source of competitive advantage in today's global economy. Next, they offer a practice-based definition of knowledge management and discuss three current approaches to knowledge management implementation—mechanistic, “the learning organization,” and systemic. The authors then examine three weaknesses in existing U.S. public policy and policy implementation—the dominance of knowledge creation, the need for diffusion-oriented technology policy, and the prevalence of a dissemination model—that affect diffusion of the results of federally-funded R&D. To address these shortcomings, they propose the development of a knowledge management framework for diffusing the results of federally-funded R&D. The article closes with a discussion of some issues and challenges associated with implementing a knowledge management framework for diffusing the results of federally-funded R&D.     

Technical Reports De-Mystified

This paper explores some of the reasons why technical reports are so difficult to identify, and gives some hints for accessing technical reports in a government documents collection. The major producers of technical reports are discussed and the many kinds of technical reports are explained. The elements of a typical citation for a technical report are listed, and the differences between report numbers, contract numbers, and accession numbers are articulated. Four of the most useful indexes for verifying technical reports are compared. The emphasis is on U.S. federal technical reports.     

Federal subventionary activities: Policy issues and information sources

Federal funding, a complex, multi-billion dollar enterprise, comprises many activities and forms, and is ineluctably influenced by political issues and national polity. Following a history of federal funding and a typology of research and development (R&D) programs, the article examines sources of information, the role of national laboratories in nuclear weapons research, the relationship between defense grants and university standards, and problems of accountability, duplication, and trivialization of subject matter. Implicit in these examples is the thesis that no realistic analysis of federally sponsored research is possible unless examined in the larger ideological and intellectual ambience in which R&D is allocated.     

Technical reports and non-depository publications

Documents Librarina, Colorado State University Libraries, Fort Collins, CO 80523-0002. USA There was a significant increase in the number of publications disseminated by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) during 1993. This continues the trend of the past few years. NTIS continues to receive and distribute federally funded research and development reports, which are abstracted in Government Reports Announcements and Index (GRA&I) and related abstracts. In 1993 the way in which government information is disseminated changed, and as a result the role of librarians in this process has been critically examined. The trend toward more information being distributed in electronic format continues. Internet access to legislative information is now available, and many agencies are developing Internet sites to provide access to their data. New rules were published in a January 1994 Federal Register to transfer to NTIS unclassified scientific, technical, and engineering information (STEI) resulting from federally funded research and development activities. In response to comments on the proposed rules, NTIS incorporated into their plan the dissemination of these publications to depository libraries. In June, the Federal Deposiory Library Program proposed an interagency agreement with NTIS that would facilitate the distribution of these documents to the depositories. If this agreement is signed, it would result in a plan that would take advantage of the selection and distribution systems already in place in the Depository Library Program. It would make it much easier for depository libraries to select the STEI that they need and to ensure that the publications are made available to the public. All of the publications reviewed below were published in 1993. Technical reports are available from NTIS, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield. VA 22161, USA; the publications may also be obtained from the issuing agencies. 1 wish to thank Fred C. Schmidt (FCS), Head, Documents Department; Lou E. Anderson (LEA), Documents Librarian; and Awilda Reyes (AR), Documents Librarian, all of Colorado State University Libraries, for reviews contributed to this column.     

浅析美国国立实验室经费管理的若干特点

美国国立实验室和实验基地承担着国防、能源、航空航天、卫生健康,农业等领域的重要研发任务。长 期以来,美国联邦政府对这些实验室的管理形成了一套规范的办法,特别是在其经费管理方面具有独到的方法,从而 保障了国立实验室的有效运行。美国的这些方法对我国的研发经费管理很有借鉴意义。     

政府采购推动企业提高科技资源使用效率的实证研究

企业利用科技资源进行R&D 是自主创新战略的基础,而政府采购则是影响企业利用现有科技资源进行R&D 的有效手段。文章依据生产成本理论和投资需求理论构建了政府采购推动企业提高科技资源使用效率进行R&D 的理论 分析框架,并在此框架下建立了实证计量模型,通过对所选取的30 个行业的计量分析,在行业层面上分别从静态和动 态两个视角研究了政府采购对企业利用现有科技资源进行R&D 的推动效应。     

Documenting federal scientific and technical information (STI): A discussion of appraisal criteria and applications for the national archives and records administration

The preservation of scientific data is a complex task, both in theory and in practice. This article examines the major producers of U.S. federal government scientific technical information (STI), principal data categories, and the role of the National Archives in documenting scientific data. The preservation of scientific data by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is a monumental task in both volume and complexity of the data and the issues involved. This article will examine several important questions surrounding the appraisal, accessioning, and preservation of scientific data by NARA.     

Best practices in electronic government: Comprehensive electronic information dissemination for science and technology

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) has successfully reinvented the way in which DOE collects, organizes, archives, disseminates, and uses scientific and technical information in the performance of research and development (R&D). Through a suite of innovative Web-based products conceived and developed by the Department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), information and resources resulting from the Department’s R&D activities, as well as worldwide information needed by the research community, are readily available to all users in a fully integrated E-Government environment. This suite of products is accessible publicly at <http://www.osti.gov>.     

Landsat Yesterday and Today

Abstract

Since the late 1960s, the United States government has invested more than $1 billion in designing, launching, and operating the Landsat (land satellite) series of Earth-observing satellites. Global change researchers, geologists, and environmental scientists have used images gathered by the satellites for purposes ranging from human health research, energy exploration, and pollution detection to agricultural assessments, urban growth monitoring, and earthquake lineament studies.

The earliest data were captured on a digital medium called wide-band video tape (WBVT). However, two decades of unsound media storage conditions and a poorly maintained processing system have left the physically deteriorating WBVTs with no mechanism for interpretation. A national treasure was in jeopardy. With seed money from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) began a project to rescue the data. More than 21,000 tapes from the 1970s have been transcribed to stable, archival media, preserving the data for future studies in Earth System Science.     

Information technologies: challenges and opportunities for local governments

Information technology (IT) applications in local government have been mostly used to advance the technical capacity of localities in delivering public services. As decision making responsibility moves from the U.S. federal government to local governments, academic researchers should address the need for developing intuitive decision support systems (DSS) for government managers and senior decision makers. The task-specific models of Web-based information systems (IS) discussed in this study can help local government managers capture information in multimedia format and facilitate information sharing between their department and other agencies without dependency on specific platforms, time differences, or locations in a cost-effective manner. Consequently, research should be encouraged to develop methods that respond to questions of training in the new IS environment and to provide solutions to facilitate service and system integration despite the environmental and political complexity surrounding local governments.     

Federal information: Foundation for national competitiveness

The National Technical Information Service functions as a cornerstone for the Federal technological publishing structure in the United States. It is a key participant in the development of those information processes that are helping, in part, to support U.S. productivity and industrial innovation. NTIS, which recognizes the relationship between information and competiveness, links the end products of information producers to those who need them. Many complicated issues confront all of us, in terms of sharing information for greater national competitiveness. For example, what steps can be taken to ensure and improve the use of government generated scientific and technical knowledge, how can NTIS better serve more government sources and customers, and what are the implications of recent government policies in terms of technology transfer? This article explores these and related issues.     

Scientific Communication,Electronic Access and Document Delivery: The New Challenge to the Science/engineering Reference Librarian

Scientific and technical communication is one means of sharing knowledge in the form of ideas, research findings and/or observations by and among scientists and engineers. The literature dealing with information-seeking behavior by the pure scientists and engineers is reviewed. Information technology is advancing at a rapid rate that engineers and pure scientists ought to know how to locate and use the right kind of literature pertinent to their respective field. In this respect, the role to be played by the science/reference librarians is very critical.     

Technology & U.S. government information policies: Catalysts for new partnerships

Technology, moving faster than policy development, has left U.S. government information programs resting on uncertain foundations. This article, an abridgement of a report by the ARL Task Force on Government Information in Electronic Format, is the result of an effort to develop a framework for understanding—philosophically, functionally, and fiscally — the patterns that exist for government information today, and the shifts in those patterns resulting from the introduction of government information in electronic formats. Four questions are identified that should be considered by government agencies and libraries as decisions are made about how to provide the public with government informtion in electronic format. The report points to be need for a clearer picture of how government responsiblities for public availability of government information in eictronic formats might be fulfilled in partnership with the private sector without the loss of the characteristics that make this information distinctive: the absence of restrictions on use, including for basic government information, absence of a fee.     

药品开发主体分析

日本版NIH及其制药企业,政策制定·战略规划需要佐证。本研究尝试基于新的指标体系进行制药产业的现状俯瞰与预测未来。连载第三篇着眼于持有在研药物(pipeline)主体的规模及其种类,分析了掌控医药品开发的关键主体。其结果表明美国的强项在于中小企业与创业企业。另一方面,日本中小企业与创业企业没有承担像美国那样的角色。     

How public investment fuels innovation: Clues from government-subsidized USPTO patents

Considerably little effort has been devoted to systematically exploring the landscape of government-funded innovation schemes, leaving policymakers and academics little empirical evidence with which to grasp the overall situation of national R&D funding strategies. In the United States (US), patents with a government right or financial interest are flagged, offering a window through which we can examine the landscape of today's patterns of government support for innovation. We conduct the examination from the perspectives of the leading government agencies, the promotor-recipient relationship, and the common concerns of different participants. The results show that the R&D project funding by federal agencies has, among other factors, contributed to the growth in the number of patent records. The Departments of Defense (DoD), Energy (DoE), and Health and Human Services (HHS), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have issued the most funding and hold rights to more patent records than any other agencies. Moreover, reforms to the US patent system made 40 years ago to afford more protection to non-government assignees appear to have significantly impacted patenting activity. Universities, companies, and individuals have become far more active in fulfilling government-funded projects, with remarkable innovations as a result. In recent years, funding priorities have shifted toward research in biomedicine, fields related to human life, and computer science. However, the four dominant agencies responsible for most government funding differ in their investment priorities and frequently adjust which areas of innovation they support. This study is among the first attempts to support the landscape of the public-invested innovation using the full government-subsidized patent dataset. The analyses in this paper are instructive in understanding the dynamics of US government funding for innovation and informing effective policymaking around innovation.     

Measuring risk in science

Risk plays a fundamental role in scientific discoveries, and thus it is critical that the level of risk can be systematically quantified. We propose a novel approach to measuring risk entailed in a particular mode of discovery process – knowledge recombination. The recombination of extant knowledge serves as an important route to generate new knowledge, but attempts of recombination often fail. Drawing on machine learning and natural language processing techniques, our approach converts knowledge elements in the text format into high-dimensional vector expressions and computes the probability of failing to combine a pair of knowledge elements. Testing the calculated risk indicator on survey data, we confirm that our indicator is correlated with self-assessed risk. Further, as risk and novelty have been confounded in the literature, we examine and suggest the divergence of the bibliometric novelty and risk indicators. Finally, we demonstrate that our risk indicator is negatively associated with future citation impact, suggesting that risk-taking itself may not necessarily pay off. Our approach can assist decision making of scientists and relevant parties such as policymakers, funding bodies, and R&D managers.     

Assessing R&D efficiency using a two-stage dynamic DEA model: A case study of research institutes in the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Various studies have been devoted to the evaluation of the research and development (R&D) performances of universities and research institutes. However, existing studies tend to focus on static systems, that is, systems with no intertemporal effect. To tackle this issue, this study attempts to assess relative R&D efficiency of institutes from a dynamic perspective. The unified two-stage model proposed by Kao (2017) made a contribution to combining division efficiencies in the multiplier form with frontier projections in the envelopment form in a unified framework. We develop his model in a dynamic framework into which the effects of carry-over activities are embedded across the period. If the dynamic effects in the efficiency measures are not considered, the results will be biased. This is one of the few studies to examine dynamic effects within the framework of the R&D process. Our analysis is based on samples of 17 research institutes in the Chinese Academy of Sciences over the period of 2012–2015. When compared with the proposed data envelope analysis (DEA) model, results show that the static DEA model may underestimate the R&D efficiency scores. The institutes experienced significant improvements in system efficiency, mainly due to the improvements in transfer efficiency. However, there is still much room for improvement in transferring scientific and technological (S&T) achievements. We also find that the resource scale played an important role in influencing basic research. Finally, the projections of inefficient institutes indicate that most institutes had insufficient carry-over inputs (newly approved projects and management cost) based on the average four-year values, and existing slack resources for managers to improve the future performance.     

研发合作中的信息资源配置系统动力学建模与仿真

应用系统动力学方法对产学研研发合作中的信息资源配置演化机理进行定性与定量研究,构建系统动力学模型,并利用该模型对我国2010-2025年产学研研发合作中的信息资源配置情况进行模拟仿真,根据仿真结果提出信息资源优化配置方案,以此提高研发合作中信息资源的投入-产出效益。     

Assessing information security risks in the cloud: A case study of Australian local government authorities

Cloud computing enables cost-effective and scalable growth of IT services that can enhance government services. Despite the Australian Federal Government's ‘cloud-first’ strategy and policies, and the Queensland State Government's ‘digital-first’ strategy, cloud services adoption at local government level has been limited—largely due to data security concerns. We reviewed the ISO 27002 Information Security standard with extant literature and found that operational security, individual awareness and compliance matters pose more significant government challenges than the often-highlighted technical and process-oriented cloud security requirements. This study identifies and explores the critical factors associated with information security requirements of cloud services within the Australian regional local government context. We conducted 21 field interviews with IT managers, and surveyed 480 IT staff from Australia's 47 regional local governments. We propose a conceptual cloud computing security requirements model with four components – data security; risk assessment; legal & compliance requirements; and business & technical requirements – in order to promote a balanced view on cloud security for governments. Using this model, governments can work together to demand uniform security requirements for adopting cloud services.