best to balance these two and so far it’s working pretty well.”

What the future holds

All of the R&D agencies have issued plans for meeting the requirement set up by the White House to supply free public access after a 12-month embargo to their published research. But since there are so many agencies and to research every single one would be cumbersome, the government is looking into a single-access point to all governmentfunded R&D. The portal for this project already exists—it is called science.gov. While the website does not yet have the capability for this project, it is something in the realm of possibility that’s not difficult to do and is being worked on for future access, said Salmon.

Going forward, the White House is also looking to seamlessly integrate text, data, videos and all other information that will appear in a publication. Computer-driv-en text and data mining is the newly accessible collection that the government is putting together, which is said to hold tremendous opportunity for discovery.

“The government is not about efficiency, it’s about representation. For some we have found that progress and the public access field is much too slow, they would argue that the government is dragging its feet in getting this article off the ground,” Salmon concluded. “For others it’s a threat to the publishing community. We’ve tried to find a way to meet these competing interests while serving the

—Anna Spiewak, Contributing Editor

Jeffrey Salmon, Ph.D, deputy director for resource management for the R&D 100 Conference in Washington, D.C., November 2016.

R&D 100 Conference Focuses on
that Drive the Economy

Innovation Strategies

The second annual R&D 100 Conference, held Nov. 2-4, 2016 in the Washington, DC area, brought together R&D professionals to explore R&D trends and hot topics, including the General Session –“Inspired Leadership in R&D: The New Face of Public Access to Federal R&D Results”—which focused on this nation’s rich repository of scientific data, new technology and discovery.

Dr. Jeffrey Salmon, Deputy Director, Resource Management, Department of Energy (DOE), explained the model used by the DOE and its national laboratories to provide the vital information needed to further science and innovation involving such significant research areas as energy, national security and the environment. The R&D community, as well as the public, needs to be aware of and have access to the many scientific breakthroughs to further research and accelerate progress. Dr. Salmon’s presentation outlined the important progress across federal agencies in terms of public access to federal R&D results—and how it has impacted the R&D community and drives economic growth.

The R&D 100 Conference is held in conjunction with the R&D 100 Awards, which celebrates 55 years in 2017. Since 1963, the R&D 100 Awards program has identified and celebrated the top 100 technology products of the year.

Past winners have included significant testing equipment, innovative new materials, chemistry breakthroughs, biomedical products, consumer items, and technologies spanning industry, academia and government-sponsored research. A detailed list of 2016 winners and information on the 2017 R&D 100 Awards program is available at rd100conference.com. Entries are now open for the 2017 R&D 100 Awards program.

In addition to Dr. Salmon’s Gener-
al Session on public access to federal
R&D, the conference also featured
an impressive roster of educational
sessions and networking opportuni-
ties with a theme of “R&D Strategy,
Innovation and Leadership.”
Throughout the conference,
cross-disciplinary sessions addressed
a variety of developments from the
past year. Keynote speakers and
breakout sessions provided R&D
forecasts for the coming year and cre-
ated collaborative opportunities for
sharing ideas and networking with
industry peers.