IET Inspec

The Inspec database, created by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), is one of the world’s most definitive bibliographic scientific databases, containing nearly 15 million abstracts and specialized indexing to the world’s scientific and technical literature covering physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computing, information technology, manufacturing, production and mechanical engineering. 

Inspec is the premier non-patent literature (NPL) source for:

• prior art, state-of-the-art and current awareness searches
• sourcing documents for opposing or challenging the validity of patents
• assessing who is working with whom for due diligence searches

Inspec is particularly useful to today’s patent researcher because of the database’s advanced indexing schemes which are mapped to the WIPO IPC scheme; this enables IPC symbols to be assigned to relevant records within the database. Use of IPC codes in Inspec are an invaluable tool for the prior art searcher, allowing the ready clustering of relevant non-patent literature within the same familiar code structure used for patents. Over 20,500 patent documents are included in Inspec; including records with abstracts for selected UK and US basic and equivalent patents in the fields of physics, electronics, computing and control which were published from 1968 to 1976. Original patent publication numbers are also included in the database, making it possible to locate an English-language equivalent patent for a non-English language original. The presence of fully searchable abstracts together with Inspec Thesaurus and Classification terms allow retrieval of patents that may pre-date those found in traditional patent sources.

When combined with the extensive Inspec Archive, users can also search over 100 years worth of prior art records from the world’s technical and scientific literature in all related fields of research and development.

Available via the EBSCOhost® platform, The Inspec Database can be accessed wherever you do your research. EBSCOhost’s responsive interface is designed to adapt to whatever device you are using so that your research experience will be as easy and productive as possible.

From desktops to tablets to mobile phones, Inspec is the definitive source for information on the latest engineering and scientific literature.

For more information, please visit:  www.ebsco.com/promo/inspec-fy15