The Spire Project: Researching Research

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Conclusion

Finding the research of others can be difficult. Publicizing research work is not a primary focus of most researchers. Consequently searching for evidence is difficult, and may include searching for patents, newspaper clips, article, theses and other sources that may describe research.

A collection of specialty government research databases have arisen to create a uniform portal to certain research information. Some are free online. There are also directories to research centers to consider.

I nternet

	Governmental Research Databases
	CRIS, (Current Research Information System) is produced by the US Dept of Agriculture (USDA) and includes Canadian, USDA, and Czech agriculture, food and forestry research. Projects sponsored by these or affiliated agencies are included. Further descriptions can be found from the USDA website. Access is free on the net.
	The United States Department of Energy (DOE) publishes The DOE Information Bridge, a database with full-text and bibliographic records of DOE-sponsored research and development. Covers research projects in energy sciences and technology. Further description can be found on their website.
	Cordis is a free online database of European Research Developments by the EC.
	Australia's CSIRO Research Programs and Project on the web.
	The Community of Science Inc. (www.cos.com) maintains the Funded Research Database. This is a free online database of US government funded research. Work by the Small Business, Medical, Science, Agriculture and more are bundled here. Start here. Keep in mind COS is not the source of this information but does present it online as a free searchable database.
If you want to search the free patent databases, see our Patent Research article.

L ibrary

	Research Centers
Instead of directly seeking evidence of specific research projects, an alternative is to seek a research center with an established reputation in researching a particular field.
	The Research Centers and Services Directory is a directory of 26,000+ Research Centres Internationally. Unfortunately, this directory is a self-assessment of research capability and not specific current research descriptions. Further descriptions courtesy of Dialog. Large libraries may subscribe, so search for the specific titles: Research Centers Directory, Research Services Directory, Government Research Directory (all US & Canada) and the International Research Centers Directory (world but not US & Canada).
	An alternative is the Longman Research Centers directory. Further description courtesy of EINS.
Universities are frequent sites for research centers and while all universities publish some information on the internet, the real information is presented in their annual report. (Archives of state annual reports are available at state libraries.)

C ommercial

	Commercial Resources
Many of the more important Commercial Databases are directly related to the Library Resources
	National Technical Information Service (NTIS). Further descriptions can be found from EINS, OVID FieldGuide, Dialog, Datastar, SilverPlatter.

	Commercial Databases
	JICST is the Japanese technical and science. Further description from Dialog and Datastar. In Canada, there is the Canadian Research Index courtesy of SilverPlatter. Additional national research databases do exist for other countries including Italy and Germany but you will need the assistance of the Gale Directory of Databases (description) for further directions. A varied collection of Australian databases follows:
	Australian Rural Research in Progress, a Commercial Database by CSIRO, Australia.
	CSIRO Index, 70,000+ citations to publications from CSIRO-sponsored projects - bibliographic and a long standing database. Available on Ozline.
	The Australian Energy Research in Progress(1986 - 92) is a database directory and fulltext description of R&D in energy and demo projects. 1986 to 1992 on Ozline.
	The Australian Education Index (1978+), cites with some abstracts, Australian work in education.

C onclusion

Once through these resources, you need to again consider the patent search, the news search, and the article search. These searches may often be easier and will illuminate research not found in the above resources. Try the very-large news databases in particular for their very wide coverage, and search the free patent databases if only because they are quick and free.

The Spire Project - better ways to find information.
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