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How disturbing it is for one working toward a given objective on a research project to learn after much labor that others have already met that or a similar objective, perhaps a year or more earlier. Unfortunately, even a thorough search of the literature is of little avail, because publication, and all the delays that it entails, usually does not occur until results are achieved and evaluated.
Beginning with this issue, the Archives of Surgery will make available to interested readers a service for purchase of "notices of research projects," as selected from the more than 100,000 notices available through the Smithsonian Science Information Exchange, Inc. (SSIE), a nonprofit corporation of the Smithsonian Institution. Notices covering all fields of basic and applied science are registered by SSIE and computerized for storage and retrieval.
SSIE is unique in that it is dedicated to the gathering and disseminating of data on planned