Energy Citations Database

The Energy Citations Database (ECD) was created in 2001 in order to make scientific literature citations, and electronic documents, publicly accessible from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and its predecessor agencies, at no cost to the user. This database also contains all the unclassified materials from Energy Research Abstracts. Classified materials are not available to the public. ECD does include the unclassified, unlimited distribution scientific and technical reports from the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration. The database is usually updated twice per week.^[1][2]

ECD provides free access to over 2.6 million science research citations with continued growth through regular updates. There are over 221,000 electronic documents, primarily from 1943 forward, available via the database. Citations and documents are made publicly available by the Regional Federal Depository Libraries. These institutions maintain and make available DOE research literature, providing access to non‑electronic documents prior to 1994, and electronic access to more recent documents.^[1][2]

ECD was created and developed by DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information with the science-attentive citizen in mind. It contains energy and energy‑related scientific and technical information collected by the DOE and its predecessor agencies.^[1][2]

Scope

Topics, or subjects, and Department of Energy disciplines of interest in Energy Citations Database (ECD) are wide-ranging. Scientific and technical research encompass chemistry, physics, materials, environmental science, geology, engineering, mathematics, climatology, oceanography, computer science, and related disciplines. It includes bibliographic citations to report scientific literature, conference papers, journal articles, books, dissertations, and patents. ^[1]

Stated capabilities

Bibliographic citations for scientific and technical information dating from 1943 to the present day. Search capabilities include full text, bibliographic citation, title, creator/author, subject, identifier numbers, publication date, system entry date, resource/document type, research organization, sponsoring organization, and/or any combination of these.

Commensurate with the above search capabilities is sorting results by various means. Results can be sorted by relevance, publication date, system entry date, resource/document type, title, research organization, sponsoring organization, or the unique Office of Scientific Information (OSTI) Identifier. Furthermore, acquiring a count of search results, combined with a link to the actual results is available.

• ability to receive weekly Alerts in topics of interest;
• information about acquiring a non-electronic document

Research and database in predecessor agencies

Since the late 1940s, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) and its predecessor organizations have been responsible for the management of scientific and technical information (STI) for the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). Growth and development of STI management has incorporated planning, developing, maintaining, and administering all services and facilities required to accomplish the dissemination of scientific and technical information for the encouragement of scientific progress.^[3]

Atomic Energy Commission

In 1942, the Manhattan Project was established by the United States Army to conduct atomic research with the goal of ending World War II. This research was performed in a manner that helped to cement the ongoing bond between basic scientific research and national security. After the war, the authority to continue this research was transferred from the Army to the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) through the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. This Act was signed into law by President Harry S. Trumanun on August 1, 1946, and entrusted the AEC with the government monopoly in the field of atomic research and development.^[3][4]

Energy Reorganization Act

The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 abolished the Atomic Energy Commission and established the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). ERDA was created to achieve two goals:

First was to focus the Federal Government’s energy research and development activities within a unified agency whose major function would be to promote the speedy development of various energy technologies. The second, was to separate nuclear licensing and regulatory functions from the development and production of nuclear power and weapons. ^[3][4]

Department of Energy

To achieve a major Federal energy reorganization, the Department of Energy (DOE) was activated on October 1, 1977. DOE became the twelfth cabinet-level department in the Federal Government and brought together for the first time most of the government's energy programs and defense responsibilities that included the design, construction, and testing of nuclear weapons. Uniting seemingly disparate organizations and programs reflected a common commitment to performing first rate science and technology. The Department of Energy sought–and continues to seek–to be one of the Nation’s premier science and technology organizations. ^[3][5]

Features section

The Energy Citations Database features noteworthy topics of discussion in the features section.

Supercomputer Modeling and Visualization

Supercomputer Modeling and Visualization is a notable featured topic in June 2010. It is discussed in three DOE research areas. Two of these are discussed below in the context of the featured topic.

SciDAC

SciDAC is a specially designed program within the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. It enables scientific discovery through advanced computing (SciDAC), and is driven by a spirit of collaboration. Discipline scientists, applied mathematicians, and computer scientists are working together to maximize use of the most sophisticated high-power computers for scientific discovery. Research results are promgulated through the SciDAC review magazine. Supercomputer Modeling and Visualization is covered in the Spring 2010 issue of this magazine.^[6]

VACET program

A perspective on supercomputer modeling and visualization is also discussed in the DOE's VACET program.

The Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technologies (VACET) focuses on leveraging scientific visualization and analytics software technology as an enabling technology for increasing scientific productivity and insight. Advances in computational technology have resulted in an "information big bang," which in turn has created a significant data understanding challenge. This challenge is widely acknowledged to be one of the primary bottlenecks in contemporary science. Using an organizational model such as VACET, we are well positioned to respond to the needs of a diverse set of scientific stakeholders in a coordinated fashion using a range of visualization, mathematics, statistics, computer and computational science and data management technologies.

The vision of VACET is to adapt, extend, create when necessary, and deploy visual data analysis solutions that are responsive to the needs of DOE's computational and experimental scientists. Our center is engineered to be directly responsive to those needs and to deliver solutions for use in DOE's large open computing facilities. The research and development directly target data understanding problems provided by our scientific application stakeholders. VACET draws from a diverse set of visualization technology ranging from production quality applications and application frameworks to state-of-the-art algorithms for visualization, analysis, analytics, data manipulation, and data management. Our goal is to respond to the urgent needs of the scientific community by providing significant, production-quality technology to aid in data understanding.^[7]

Regional Federal Depository Libraries

Logo for a Federal Depository Library

There are nearly 1,250 depository libraries throughout the United States and its territories. Access to all documents (hundreds of thousands) is no-fee access. Expert assisted searches are available, on site.

Federal depository libraries have been established by Congress to ensure that the American public has access to its Government's information. The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) involves the acquisition, format conversion, and distribution of depository materials to libraries throughout the United States and the coordination of Federal depository libraries in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

Since 1813, depository libraries have safeguarded the public's right to know by collecting, organizing, maintaining, preserving, and assisting users with information from the Federal Government. Depository libraries provide local, no-fee access to Government information in an impartial environment with professional assistance.

The mission of the FDLP is to disseminate information products from all three branches of the Government to about 1,250 libraries nationwide at no cost.

The U.S. Government Printing Office administers the FDLP and serves to provide this network of libraries with the tools they need to keep America informed.^[8]

Federal depository library coverage

Coverage generally encompasses:

• Health and Nutrition
• Laws, Statistics, and Presidential Materials
• Science and Technology
• Business and Careers
• Education
• History
• World Maps

Available formats are publications, journals, electronic resources, microfiche, microfilm and various other formats encompassing hundreds of thousands of topics. ^[8]

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Department of Energy.
 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Government.