Locating unclassified government‐sponsored research reports

Many physicists will recall Dwight Gray’s article on unpublished research reports which appeared in Physics Today (June 1957, p. 18). This article showed that for the technical reports that contained publishable data, all such information is published within two to three years for only half of these reports. There are probably more reports today than when this study was completed. It therefore becomes a matter of increasing importance to obtain these reports promptly and, if possible, prior to publication in a journal. The problem is one which is particularly acute for those scientists who are not working on such government‐sponsored projects and, hence, find it more difficult to obtain published government research reports, even if these reports are unclassified.

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