OSTI Employees Are Committed to Giving Back to Their Communitiesby Erin Dominick Anderson 30 Nov, 2016 in Besides having a passion for serving our country and its citizens through broad dissemination of Department of Energy R&D results, Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) employees are also committed to giving back to their local, national, and global communities in other ways. Similar to many employer-supported charitable giving campaigns, there is an annual effort across the U.S. Federal Government known as the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). OSTI has participated for many years, with a high percentage of employees donating each campaign season. The CFC was created in 1961 to coordinate the fundraising efforts of various charitable organizations, which must demonstrate standards of transparency and effectiveness in order to participate in the campaign. Federal employees continue to make the CFC the largest and most successful workplace philanthropic fundraiser in the world. The CFC is structured with 125 local campaigns that organize the annual fundraising effort. OSTI is part of the Smoky Mountain Region Combined Federal Campaign. In 2016, OSTI employees donated thousands of dollars to local, national, and international organizations. OSTI employees Tammy Payne (front left), Catherine Pepmiller (top left), and Kelly Dunlap volunteering on the ... Related Topics: CFC, Communities, osti, Smoky Mountain Region Combined Federal Campaign Read more... |
OSTI and ORCID: Working to Help Link DOE Authors and Their Research Resultsby Catherine Pepmiller 20 Sep, 2016 in It has always been important for authors and researchers to maintain and present accurate records of their work and experience. In this digital age, an author can achieve such record-keeping by using a persistent digital identifier, a number associated with a particular author that remains with him or her, regardless of changes in discipline, research project, organization, or position. ORCID, a not-for-profit-organization working to make it easier to connect research results to authors, has stepped in to provide just such a service. To date, they have registered over 2.5 million ORCID iDs for their users, and this number grows daily. ORCID first opened its registry allowing researchers to register ORCID iDs and link their works to their iD in 2012, and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) was one of the first federal organizations to embrace the ORCID concept. In spring 2013, OSTI moved to help make it even easier for researchers to employ ORCID iD by offering the option to submit scientific and technical information (STI) records including an ORCID iD via E-Link, the DOE corporate STI ingest system. Once records have been processed, users may search SciTech Connect by ORCID iD to find works associated with that iD. Under this system, authors curate their ORCID Works list manually, adding records... Related Topics: orcid, osti, SciTech Connect Read more... |
OSTI Is Re-Focusing and Re-Balancing Its Operations – And Refreshing Its Home Page – to Advance Public Accessby Dr. Jeffrey Salmon 03 Mar, 2014 in Products and Content
Let’s call it creative destruction, borrowing from a popular term in economics. The idea is that the very essence of capitalism is the destruction of old structures and the building of new ones that inevitably face the same pressures as the structures they replaced. It’s the reason the buggy whip industry fell on hard times. The information management business of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is in constant flux too, where the next big thing can soon become the next big flop. OSTI cannot be immune to these disruptive forces, nor would we wish it to be. Here, I would like to focus on just one of many disruptive forces in the information management and information technology worlds compelling OSTI to change, the push for greater public access to federally-funded R&D results. Frankly, it’s a disruptive force we welcome. Increasingly the legislative and executive branches of government have emphasized public access to federally-funded scholarly publications (i.e., journal articles and accepted manuscripts) and digital datasets. OSTI will lead the implementation of public access to scholarly publications for DOE, just as the organization has offered public access to other forms of scientific and technical information (STI) emanating from DOE and its predecessor agencies for the past 67 years. To this end, OSTI is re-focusing and re-balancing its resources, operations, and priorities. For OSTI, this means looking first and foremost at the STI produced by DOE and serving DOE R&D interests. OSTI is working to be as comprehensive as possible in its processes to collect, preserve/curate, and disseminate all forms of STI from DOE. This means that the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program, or STIP, is of paramount importance. STIP is a robust and effective collaboration across the DOE... Related Topics: .EDUconnections, Adopt-A-Doc, DOE Green Energy, DOE STI, journal literature, National Library of Energy (NLE) - Beta, osti, OSTI Homepage, Science Accelerator, Science Conference Proceedings, ScienceLab, SciTech Connect
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And the winner is . . . . you!by Kathy Chambers 01 Apr, 2013 in Products and Content
Did you ever stop to think what makes it possible for you to have immediate, free access to Department of Energy (DOE) scientific findings from billions of dollars of annual research? A lot of behind-the-scenes work and dedication of an entire community make it all possible. The heart and soul of this endeavor is the DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), a collaboration to ensure your access to DOE research and development results. The DOE Office of Science provides overall leadership and policy direction of the STIP program consistent with the DOE mission and legal requirements. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) coordinates the Department-wide STI program across DOE programs, field offices, national laboratories, and contractors to disseminate and preserve the Department’s scientific and technical information (STI) for your use. And, OSTI maintains state-of-the-art information management systems, databases, national and international web portals to provide you immediate, easy access to publicly available information. In total, about 50 designated representatives from the DOE Headquarters Program Offices, National Laboratories and Technology Centers, and Field Offices work together with OSTI’s staff to collect, review, release and provide you access to the outcomes of DOE-sponsored research. Through STIP, you are made aware of emerging technologies and amazing research made possible through DOE’s preeminent user facilities. You always have access to this information in OSTI’s new... Related Topics: Department of Energy, doe, labs, osti, Scientific and Technical Information Program Website, stip Read more... |
@OSTIgov Twitter is Trending!by Linda McBrearty 05 Mar, 2013 in Products and Content
Social media has changed the way we look at everything. Just in the past few years, society has moved from a limited amount of news sources to an infinite network of information. And we don’t necessarily have to go looking for data because links, advertisements and news stories seem to be popping up on every screen, message or page. That’s why it’s more important than ever to know where valuable scientific and technical information can be accessed. One way the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is reaching out to folks interested in high quality federally-funded scientific and technical information is through their Twitter account @OSTIgov. @OSTIgov frequently posts information about current topics of interest such as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) resources; search queries for weatherization; or laboratory highlights just to mention a few. Our team identifies timely subjects and cross references links to complete search results and datasets within OSTI websites. The goal is to attract science-attentive twitter users who will appreciate the post and continue using OSTI’s helpful resources. @OSTIgov also promotes DOE or @Energy tweets and other agencies or national labs that present science-related information. The Twitter followers for @OSTIgov continue to steadily increase and we encourage you to join the information team! In addition to @OSTIgov we support two other helpful accounts: @sciencegov and @worldwidescienc. @sciencegov provides information from 13 Science.gov agencies and includes "Science in the News" headlines. @worldwidescienc covers data from over 80 national and international scientific databases and portals. Join the @OSTIgov team and see what’s trending each day! Your next discovery could be one click away! Related Topics: @ostigov, osti, science, social media, twitter Read more... |
The Secret City Is Emerging from Its Pastby Dr. Walt Warnick 09 Nov, 2012 in Science Communications
Oak Ridge is rapidly emerging from a secret city into the hub of open science information. How did this happen? It’s an amazing story. In 1942, deep within the quiet farm hills of East Tennessee, a secret city called Oak Ridge was created seemingly overnight. Approximately 75,000 workers worked tirelessly to refine uranium ore into fissionable material. When the first atomic bomb was dropped in Japan and World War II came to an end, their work for the Manhattan Project was revealed to them and to the world. Their secret is still commemorated today. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has much to be proud of: Science created its beginning and science continues to be vital to its future. Just 5 years after the birth of Oak Ridge, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) was established to manage the atomic information. Since then, OSTI has become one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of information about energy science and technology. It is a little known fact – even around Oak Ridge – that OSTI is mandated by law to maintain and make available science and technical information from research, development, demonstration, and commercial applications activities supported by DOE and its predecessors. OSTI not only collects and preserves research reports from nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 and labs and weapons facilities across the country, the Office is DOE’s mechanism for spreading the word about the results from its $10 Billion investment in annual research and development. OSTI’s creation 65 years ago signaled a sea change from the Secret City of the Manhattan Project toward openness to share R&D knowledge with the public. Since its beginning, OSTI has known that shared knowledge is an enabler of scientific progress. And sharing it does. I recently spoke to the... Related Topics: osti, Science.gov, WorldWideScience.org (WWS) Read more... |
OSTI: The Storefront for the DOEby Philip Ellis 14 Nov, 2011 in Science Communications
The Department of Energy has made a formidable contribution to the advancement of the scientific and technological knowledge frontier. In particular, DOE sponsors more basic and applied scientific research in the physical sciences than any other U.S. federal agency and all of this is made possible by the taxpayer. Additionally, in the March 2011 Federal Laboratory Technology Transfer Summary Report to the President and the Congress, it was noted that in FY09 across the federal government there were over 4,400 new inventions of which 33% were from DOE; 1,500 new patents issued with 35% from DOE; and over 2,000 new patent applications of which 44% were from DOE. If the DOE is thought of as an organization that generates innovative “products”—the cutting edge research, discoveries, patents, inventions and other technological results—then the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is its “storefront”. It is precisely from this storefront that the taxpayer—the citizen, the businessperson, the entrepreneur, the student, or the researcher—is able to access transparently this enormous array of products, know-how and scientific information. OSTI recognizes that in this storefront capacity, it plays a crucial role not only in generating return on investment (ROI) for the taxpayer in terms of making the fruits of their “investments” available to those that are interested, but also in being a catalyst for the generation of economic activity which supports and creates jobs each year from the commercialization of government-funded research. OSTI is continuously looking at creative and innovative ways for increasing the access to and awareness of this wealth of information, which, to take the storefront analogy further, would constitute marketing and distribution for DOE “products”. It is aggressively aiming to enable pursuit of the mandates of the recent October 28, 2011... Related Topics: doe, osti, product offering, ROI, scientific information Read more... |
Halloween and Scienceby Kate Bannan 27 Oct, 2011 in Science Communications
Halloween is celebrated on October 31, and is one of the world’s oldest holidays. It has evolved into a celebration enjoyed by all ages, and includes fun activities like trick-or-treating, dressing up in costumes, carving jack-o'-lanterns, going to a bonfire, apple bobbing, visiting a haunted house and telling scary stories. Did you ever wonder why we sometimes enjoy being scared? Learn about the science of fear, find tips about staying safe and healthy on Halloween, learn about “vampire” appliances, download information on Halloween storms, do research on black cats or find fun activities to do at home or in school – all of this information (and more) is available for free on Science.gov Science.gov is made available to the public by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). It searches over 50 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 14 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results. So have a scary, happy and scientific Halloween…boo!! Related Topics: Halloween, osti, Science.gov Read more... |
Commemorating DOE, a Science Agencyby Kate Bannan 30 Sep, 2011 in Personal Perspectives
The energy crisis of the 1970s demonstrated the need for unified energy planning within the federal government. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Organization Act (Public Law 95-91) was signed into law, centralizing the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Federal Power Commission and other energy-related government programs into a single presidential cabinet-level department. Related Topics: 1970s, anniversary, doe, federal, nuclear, osti, r&d, research, tools Read more... |
Mutual Benefits at Work!by Mary Schorn 23 Mar, 2011 in Products and Content DOE OSTI recently hosted a graduate student from the University of Michigan (UM) School of Information (SI) for a week in our Germantown offices. The student, Ryan Tabor, was participating in the UM SI Alternative Spring Break (ASB) program, which matches graduate students with professional-experience projects identified by host organizations. Ryan's graduate school specialty area is human-computer interaction. That, coupled with his undergraduate degree in psychology and his work experience on IT Help Desks, created a great match for OSTI's project -- a usability study of DOE R&D Accomplishments. Ryan tested and evaluated the site via various methodologies and reported his findings and recommendations. He provided some valuable insights which will result in an even more user-friendly website. This collaboration was mutually beneficial in that Ryan gained experience by working in a professional environment doing professional-level work and OSTI gained from having a 'third-party' review and feedback about one of its core products.
Mary Schorn Related Topics: accomplishments, collaboration, doe, DOE Research & Development (R&D) Accomplishments, osti Read more... |
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