International research reports - reports

"Reports" refer to international research reports that present the results, current status or progress of research projects and that are not available from booksellers. Reports are produced by university and non-university research institutions, as well as by companies. They may be commissioned or funded by government agencies (ministries, sector agencies), international organisations (e.g. the European Union, UN subsidiary organisations), institutions involved in research funding, as well as companies. Reports that are classified internal, confidential or secret are not made available, and are therefore not included in libraries' collections.

How can you obtain a particular report?

Searching for reports in databases

In the National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) database, the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) now has recirded more than three million reports from 1964 onwards, around 800,000 of which have already been digitised and are offered as PDF documents. Users outside the USA can only make advanced searches and gain direct access to full text via access subject to licensing. NTIS allows only simple searches without any advanced search options via NTRL Public.

A number of commercial database providers, such as STN and ProQuest Dialog, also enable searches to be made within the complete data stocks of NTIS for a fee.

In addition, you will also find reports concerning TIB's thematic areas in other, mainly freely searchable databases.

Searching and ordering reports in the TIB Portal

In the context of a cooperative agreement, the bibliographical data of all reports obtainable from NTIS can also be searched via the TIB Portal (data source NTIS). Once an order has been placed, we check to see whether we have received the requested report within our subject-specific subscription, and whether we can make it available.

Only some of the reports listed in the other databases mentioned are accounted for under their title in the TIB-Portal.

If you are looking for a particular report, but failed to locate it in our search system, the following options are open to you:

• You can use the Order without search form via TIB Document Delivery to try to order the report for a fee
• If you are a local user of TIB with a valid library card, please use our form for Ordering media not available for loan.

Your order should contain all available information from the source where the report was cited. In order to ensure that we can process your order as quickly as possible, we need not only the report number(s), but also, if applicable, the "NTIS Order No.", which usually starts with AD-, DE-, N-, NUREG- or PB-. We can then check the closed stacks to see whether the requested report is available at the library.

Reports may be borrowed if they exist in printed form. Since, however, the vast majority of reports are available as microfiches, such reports will be supplied in electronic form or as a microfiche duplicate. If a particular report is not kept at TIB, but is available as a full text on the internet, we will notify you of the relevant address.

If a report is unavailable, we will attempt to obtain it for you as long as we are able to determine the supplier's address and if the query appears to be sufficiently promising.

Reports as Open Access documents

It is becoming increasingly frequent for reports to be made available as Open Access documents in the relevant establishment's repositories. BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine) is one of the largest search engines in the world for Open Access scientific documents available on the internet. It also features an excellent gateway to search for reports.