Hering, Heike. How to Write Technical Reports. (Read at least section 3.5 of Chapter 3, Writing and Creating the Technical Report)
Musser, Linda. Improving Discovery of Hidden Technical Report Collections.
Popescu, Adriana. Gaining Intellectual Controll Over Technical Reports And Grey Literature Collections.
In STEM fields, technical reports are used to document research processes; research developments and results; or the current state of a new technology or finding in a given field. Additionally, technical reports differ from academic articles because they are not typically peer reviewed. They aim, instead, to update the reader about the latest developments occurring in a field or with a technology. They can vary on their topic, so long as it's technical, so you can often find technical reports about anything from lab experiments; construction and design reports; theses; to reports for funding agencies.
Technical reports should be structured and written in a way that the reader will have as much understanding of the contents as the author does. In order to do so, scientific and technical statements should be clarified or defined; what is known and what is new should be defined; and the author should clarify anything that they have worked out and concluded.
Engineers have a high value for technical reports, as they allow information to be published and viewed by peers at a faster pace than academic publishing. This allows for quick feedback from fellow engineers and continual conversation. The most up-to-date information is likely to be found in technical reports. Engineers will often have to create technical reports for project updates and documentation for funding organizations.
Like other grey literature, technical reports are unique in library collections for their difficulty to catalog and collect. This makes the collection and findability of technical reports difficult.
The development and creation of technical reports follows a similar flow to your typical research paper.
Unlike research articles, technical reports are not typically peer reviewed. Instead, they exist primarily as updates for funding organizations or for the public on the latest research and technical developments. Authors can receive feedback from other experts in their field, and it could eventually then be developed into a research article.
Technical reports are designated with alpha-numeric designations. Nearly all technical report numbers begin with an abbreviation of the issuing agency or university department. Usually, the second part of the code is a two year code indicating the year that the tech report was published. The end of the tech report number is generally sequentially assigned by chronological publication order. Those numbers may reset annually, or are assigned as a continuous series over years.
As mentioned previously, technical reports are notoriously difficult to find and access because of the nature of grey literature. However, there have been some developments to aid in supporting the search and access of technical reports.
TRAIL, or the Technical Reports Archive & Image Library, is a library that identifies, acquires, catalogs, digitizes, and provides unrestricted access to U.S. government agency technical reports. TRAIL consists of over four dozen member institutions, whose annual membership fees and volunteered time assist in the efforts of giving access to U.S. government technical reports.
TRAIL's technical reports are freely available, accessible through either HathiTrust or through the University of North Texas, depending on the size and nature of the technical report. Those with typical formatting are available in HathiTrust, while those with foldouts and are larger in size are available through the University of North Texas. The University of Arizona assists TRAIL in it's cataloging and creation of metadata for the technical reports it collects.
UIUC is a member university of TRAIL, and our TRAIL representative is Sanga Sung, our Government Information Librarian.
Internally, many libraries will use their own local repositories to update and digitize past and incoming technical reports. This ensures easier access to technical reports as well as easier discovery. One such example of a university repository is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's IDEALS repository.
Other ways of access include joining relevant listservs to communicate with fellow STEM and engineering librarians when a patron is in need of accessing a particular technical report. ELD-Net is one such example.