Standards and Technical Reports: Technical Reports

A technical report is a document that describes the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem. It is initially submitted to the body for whom the work was carried out and might include recommendations and conclusions of the research. 

Often created initially for the restricted environment, many technical reports are not equipped with rich metadata, sometimes they even lack a unique identifier. In addition to this, publication and dissemination of technical reports are not centralized, so locating and identifying specific reports could be difficult and time-consuming.

In contrast to standards:

technical reports do not necessarily reflect a consensus opinion

may contain multiple viewpoints

can be published without a public comment period

The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) 

National Technical Reports Library (NTRL) Technical reports produced by the US Department of Commerce.

Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) Full text of GESAMP Session Reports, and group committee reports and studies. Available for download as pdf files.

Technical Report Archive & Image Library (TRAIL) Searches US government technical reports digitized or harvested by TRAIL.

Technical Reports and Standards Unit (TRS) of the Science, Technology and Business Division in the Library of Congress holds one of the largest and most accessible collections of technical reports in the world.

List of Online Resources Related to Technical Reports and Standards of the Library of Congress.

To search technical reports in KAUST Research Repository, click on this link