How to read a scientific report

Scientific or technical reports

Reports are different than scientific papers in that they do not represent original research. Rather their purpose is to summarize the latest scientific research for non-scientists. Care is taken to make sure the language is less technical and more accessible to non-scientists. They usually have different chapters that may address different audiences and interests. For example, they may have different chapters addressing the effects of climate change on different sectors of the economy or different regions of the world, or different ecosystems.

Often, you may only be interested in a small section or chapter of the report. Therefore, you should always check the table of contents for the topic of interest. Different chapters usually have different authors, so you may need to cite the specific chapter in the references and the specific author in the text.

In government or academic reports, you may copy and paste tables or figures provided that you cite and reference them to give credit. If you do not do this it is considered plagiarism as the assumption is that the figures are your own. Some private organizations may demand that you ask permission: this is usually a formality, especially in the case of a student paper, but some organizations can be very proprietary about this.