Imagine you look at a recipe. Data are your ingredients and Statistics are the final product.
Observational - What you capture in real-time.
Experimental - What you produce in your lab classes.
Simulation - Modeling / Machine-generated.
Derived - Text mining, 3D models.
Textual - Field or Lab notebooks.
Discipline-specific - E.g., Viewing stars through a telescope.
Instrument-specific - E.g., Taking your body temperature.
Gray literature is the information created by organizations such as government agencies, professional associations, research institutes, and think tanks that are not published in scholarly journals or books. This includes:
Gray literature is produced by researchers and practitioners in a field and is an important component of a thorough literature review due to its depth and breadth, timeliness, flexibility, and open access.
Content written by Lisa Clarke (Librarian, NOAA Central Library) in the Gray Literature research guide. Current as of 21 Jun 2023.
Preprints are research manuscripts posted to a public server prior to formal peer-review. They are also known as ePrints or electronic preprints. Essentially, they allow researchers to share their research on an initial basis while they finalize some things. Preprints are made available on specified servers designed to carry this content.
You can publish your manuscripts on preprint servers, if you want. Though there are some considerations:
Advantages
Disadvantages
Other Considerations
Recommendations
Source: Newcome, E., Zhang, M., Jones, S., Kaurloto, C., Johnson, P.C., and Pixton, D. (2024, April 23). Preprint Repositories for the Engineering Researcher [Webinar]. Engineering Libraries Division, American Society for Engineering Education. Link to Google Slides.
A patent is the intellectual property right granted by the U.S. Government to an inventor "to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the U.S. or importing the invention into the U.S." for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted. In most cases, this is twenty years from the date of application. In some situations, the term of the patent may be extended due to delays in the processing of the application. After the patent has expired, the invention becomes public domain. In addition, patent owners must pay a maintenance fee at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after issue or else the patent will expire.
See "How to Read a U.S. Patent" from Queen's University Library for a detailed description of the sections of a U.S. patent.
Content written by Paula C Johnson (Engineering Librarian, University of Arizona Libraries) in the Intellectual Property & Patents research guide. Current as of 26 Apr 2023.
Utility patent: Describes a new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or useful improvement thereof (i.e. what something does)
Design patent: A new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture (i.e. how something looks)
Plant patent: Describes an asexually reproduced distinct and new variety of plant (e.g. ‘NuMex Heritage 6-4’ New Mexican Chile Pepper)
Content written by Paula C Johnson (Engineering Librarian, University of Arizona Libraries) in the Intellectual Property & Patents research guide. Current as of 26 Apr 2023.
You can begin your search the following way:
Content written by Paula C Johnson (Engineering Librarian, University of Arizona Libraries) in the Intellectual Property & Patents research guide. Current as of 26 Apr 2023.
You have an idea for an invention — or have gone so far as to create a prototype. Before marketing your invention, you will need to determine if your invention has already been patented. To do this, conduct a thorough patent search. This will usually involve searching a number of different patent sites, so it's useful to keep a log of all your search activity to avoid duplicate efforts.
See General Information Concerning Patents and Patent Process Overview for more information.
Content written by Paula C Johnson (Engineering Librarian, University of Arizona Libraries) in the Intellectual Property & Patents research guide. Current as of 26 Apr 2023.
In addition to the reference, substance, reaction and supplier content found in CAS SciFinder®, CAS SciFinder-n includes relevance-ranked results, step-by-step procedures and protocols, citation mapping, biosequence searching, retrosynthetic analysis, patent landscape mapping, touch-screen enabled structure drawing and much more—all accessible in a simple, easy-to-use interface.
WKU users must first create an account by clicking here: Click here to register. Once you have established a username and password, you can log in to SciFinder-n (CAS).
Technical reports describe the process, progress, or results of technical or scientific research. Include in-depth experimental details, data, and results.
Technical reports are usually produced to report on a specific research need. They can serve as a report of accountability to the organization funding the research. They provides access to the information before it is published elsewhere.
Technical Reports are usually not peer-reviewed. They need to be evaluated on how the problem, research method, and results are described.
Content written by Paul McMonigle (Engineering Instruction Librarian, Penn State University Libraries) in the Technical Reports research guide. Current as of 26 Apr 2023.
Here are some engineering-specific journals that you may want to check out!
