RIP and TRID FAQs

• Prevent duplication of research
• Connect researchers working on similar projects
• Identify experts for panels or committees
• Highlight research being done by your agency
• Required for UTCs and federally funded projects

RIP records primarily are projects funded by and/or conducted on behalf of the U.S. Department of Transportation and State Departments of Transportation. University transportation research also is included in the database.

Under the USDOT Public Access Plan requirements, any transportation-related scientific research project receiving ANY federal funding must be entered in RIP. This is effective for new funding agreements established after 12/31/2015 and existing funding agreements adding additional funding after 12/31/2015.

Projects conducted through the USDOT’s University Transportation Centers Program must be entered into RIP. This is a mandatory requirement of the award. UTCs should consult their UTC grants manager if there are questions concerning this requirement.

Scientific Research are activities comprising creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture and society. Research includes: basic research (without specific application), applied research (for a specific need), and developmental research (design, development, and improvements of prototypes and processes, including demonstration projects and other related activities associated with research and development activities). Reference: https://www.transportation.gov/mission/open/official-dot-public-access-plan-v11

Yes! State DOTs, universities and others conducting scientific research are encouraged to add their research projects to RIP, regardless of funding source.

To request access to enter records into RIP, fill out this form or email tris-trb@nas.edu. We will need your name, agency and email address. Contractors entering records on behalf of a government agency must provide written permission from their agency contact before credentials will be assigned.

No, anyone may search RIP and download/print/email records. It is publicly available at rip.trb.org.

Generally, only one record for each project is kept. If multiple agencies enter information on the same project, the information from all the agencies will be merged into one record. For example, in many cases, records for the same project will be entered by both a UTC and a State Department of Transportation. In these cases, we will merge the two records and the State Department of Transportation will be the “owner” of the record.

Records from Departments of Transportation will be available immediately. Records from UTCs are reviewed by RIP indexers first, but are generally available within one business day.

Since RIP provides current information on projects, records should be updated as project information such as funding amount and contacts are changed, and as the status of the project moves from Proposed to Active to Completed. When a project is completed and the final report is available in the TRID database, the RIP record should be deleted.

The records are identical. The RIP Database is a subset of the TRID Database which is why all projects will appear in both systems. When records are deleted from RIP, they are also removed from TRID.

The RIP database provides records on current or recently completed records from many sources, while the USDOT Research Hub is focused only on USDOT-sponsored research. TRB and USDOT have agreed to exchange project records on a regular basis to ensure that both databases contain a comprehensive account of USDOT's research portfolio. While the basic design and functionality of the USDOT Research Hub is similar to that of RIP, there are several important differences between the two databases that are summarized in the table below.

TRB’s Research in Progress Database	USDOT Research Hub
Federal, State, and other forms of sponsored research included	USDOT-sponsored research only
Focused primarily on active (ongoing) research projects.	Active projects and projects completed after 9/30/2008
Final reports and other research products are not linked to project records	Final reports and other research products linked to project records
No information on research impacts	Information on research impacts included

No, anyone may search TRID and download/print/email records. It is freely available at https://trid.trb.org/

TRB does not own the documents described in TRID, apart from reports published by TRB or the Highway Research Board (HRB).

However, many records in TRID do include a link to free OR fee-based full text. Access to full text through these links will depend on the publisher or your institutional/personal subscriptions. Your local or institutional library also can assist you in obtaining the document through interlibrary loan. You may find this resource useful for identifying local libraries that own or have access to a specific publication: https://www.worldcat.org/.

Papers presented at TRB Annual Meetings, conferences or events may be obtained only through interlibrary loan.

Contact us if we can help you find a publication.

• It provides wider dissemination and easier discovery of your work.
• It helps other transportation agencies avoid duplication of work and save resources.

Additionally…
After completing each federally funded project, researchers, State Departments of Transportation and University Transportation Centers are required to notify TRB of the URL of the full text of final reports for indexing and abstracting in TRID.

For further reference see:
National Transportation Library Public Access Plan Compliance
https://ntl.bts.gov/public-access/how-comply

23 CFR Part 420 – Planning and Research Program Administration
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2017-title23-vol1/pdf/CFR-2017-title23-vol1-part420.pdf

U.S. DOT Grant Deliverables and Requirement for UTCs
https://www.transportation.gov/utc/2013-grant-deliverables-and-requirements-utcs
https://www.transportation.gov/utc/FAST-act-deliverables-and-requirements-utcs
https://www.transportation.gov/utc/tools-grantees

Yes! Even if your project was not federally funded, we would like to know about any final technical reports that were published. Use the Submit Publication form found on the TRID homepage under the keyword search box to request consideration for inclusion in TRID.

Use the Submit Publication form found on the TRID homepage under the keyword search box.
If you have a large number of reports to submit for indexing and abstracting, please contact us at tris-trb@nas.edu for instructions.

TRIS will only consider transportation-related publications for indexing in TRID.
Our top priorities for indexing include: US DOT final reports; State DOT final reports regardless of funding source; UTC final reports regardless of funding source and university research reports.
TRIS systematically indexes transportation-related journal literature; see our list of Serials Currently Covered in the TRID Database.
Other types of publications that we routinely index include: conference papers, research reports from non-governmental organizations, and commercially published books.

Please let us know about your archival reports and publications. If there is already a record for it in TRID, we will add the full text link. Otherwise, we will create a new record for it and index it as we would any other report.

The TRID Coverage guidelines specifically exclude:

• Market research
• Vehicle standards and specifications
• Patent information
• Military transport

In addition, we do not include:

• Book reviews
• Discussions/closures
• Interviews
• Annual reports of organizations
• Articles of a page or less
• Straight summaries of reports (We’d rather have the report itself)
• Editorials
• Introductions to “special issues” that merely summarize the papers within that journal.
• “Newsy” articles
• Articles that summarize conferences
• “Advertorials” or other articles that are actually paid advertisements

The easiest way is to run a simple Title search using TRID’s advanced search filters: https://trid.trb.org/results#show-filters
But keep in mind that indexing is based on the publication itself. The title of a final report, and the title of a project may not be identical.

Please contact us at tris-trb@nas.edu . We will send you a spreadsheet with titles and URLs currently in TRID for your publications. You would simply need to provide the new URLs in the appropriate column, and return the spreadsheet to us.