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OSTIblog Articles in the sttr Topic

The Importance of Small Business Innovation Research Funding

by Dr. Walt Warnick 09 Mar, 2011 in Technology

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The Importance of Small Business Innovation Research Funding

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs were established to provide funding to stimulate technological innovation in small businesses to meet federal agency research and development needs.  Under SBIR, federal agencies with large R&D budgets set aside a small fraction of their funding for competitions exclusively among small businesses.  Each year, the DOE Office of Science sets aside 2.8% of its research budget for SBIR (2.5%) and STTR (.3%) awards.  Small businesses that win SBIR awards keep the rights to any technology developed and are encouraged to commercialize the technology.

 

Established in 1947, the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) fulfills the agency’s responsibilities to collect, preserve and disseminate scientific and technical information (STI) emanating from DOE R&D activities.  OSTI’s mission is to advance science and sustain creativity by making R&D findings available to DOE and other researchers and the public.  OSTI is founded on the principle that science progresses only if knowledge is shared; furthermore, OSTI is animated by the concept, now widely accepted, that accelerating the sharing of knowledge accelerates the advancement of science.  SBIR projects have been integral to OSTI’s success in speeding access to scientific knowledge to speed discovery, innovation and economic progress.

 

Since 2003, the Office of Science’s SBIR office has had a policy of funding knowledge technology SBIR projects under OSTI guidance that have produced technologies that today significantly benefit SC, DOE and science community researchers across the county – and around the world.  OSTI-managed SBIR projects have enabled OSTI to promote essential ongoing innovation in its products and services, which have enhanced its performance of its statutory mandate.  (Please see below for a list of technologies developed by OSTI-managed SBIR...

Related Topics: federated search, multilingual, r&d, relevance ranking, SBIR, sttr, translations

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DOE Data: Would We, Could We...?

I can’t remember how it went now, but as a child I skipped rope to a rhyme that included “would I, could I” somewhere in it.  Recently questions were asked about OSTI’s involvement with scientific research data.  Is OSTI planning to become a repository for numeric data?  Are we going to issue Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for datasets, and would we be telling people how to manage their data?  For some reason, the questions triggered the memory of that old refrain, but now I was thinking from an OSTI perspective, “would we, could we…?”

Fortunately, I’m much clearer about OSTI’s answer to those questions than I am about the conclusion of that old rhyme.  In order, the answers are a simple no, maybe, and no.

I’m in a position to know these answers because of my tasks here at OSTI.  I work with the Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) that handles policies and processes for information submissions to OSTI.  I’m also the product manager for the DOE Data Explorer http://www.osti.gov/dataexplorer/) and an OSTI point of contact for a related, ongoing STTR grant.

If you wonder why anyone would think to ask if OSTI has plans to begin taking in data, the question is, no doubt, triggered by the revision currently underway of the STI directive DOE O 241.1A.  That directive basically says that an announcement notice (citation/bibliographic record) for any scientific and technical information resulting from DOE-funded R&D must be submitted to OSTI.  For technical reports and, when possible, for other document types, that announcement notice contains a URL that links to the PDF document.  OSTI’s databases allow users to search both the citation in the database as well as the full text of the document, whether it resides at...

Related Topics: data, DOE Data Explorer (DDE), dois, r&d, Scientific and Technical Information Program Website, stip, sttr

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