“If I may ask you, what is you service about? Do you have
access to scientific information other than patents? for the past 10
years we are involved in catechin and other biflavonoids research and
discovered that many studies have been conducted in Russia / USSR.”

Actually, I was under impression what scope of our services is rather simple yet in detail explained at Patents from RU site – but apparently there is much to improve.

I took some time to summarize a description of our services in regard of scientific information researches we’ve been involved in lately – comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature has been our main occupation.

First off, here is a summary of search related services we carry out:

1) Russian patent documents delivery (for documents dated back to 1924).

We charge $29.50 per documents which are available in databases, and $50 for documents (like applications) which need to be ordered from archives.

Databases include Russian patents, Russian utility models and Russian industrial designs.

2) Russian patent database research

This service relates to cases when only a partial information is available.
We charge per hour, $60/hour.
Results will include document numbers and abstracts (if possible, in English).

3) Prior art search in patent databases of Russia and former USSR republics.

We charge $295 per subclass of IPC (there might be 1 to 5 subclasses) for searching Russian patents going back to 1924, and flat fee of $295 per search for searching fSU databases (back to 1993).

Normally, patent search is completed within a week.

Regarding English-language summary of the relevancy of found documents – the cost quoted does not include translation. English language abstracts are normally (but not 100%) available for post 1991 Russian patents – but older documents never had an English language abstracts.

We’ll do our best though to provide a short summary of each found
reference.

4) Russian Non-patent literature search (including bibliography research, Russian Internet queries, manual search in libraries).

We charge $60/hour, minimum 15 hours.
We’ll be providing intermediary reports as which literature was searched and what was found, so client will maintain control over expenses and time frame.

It’s hardly possible to provide time frame estimate – a 1-1.5 months would be more/less safe bet.

5) Document delivery service for references cited in bibliography research.

We charge $50 per references (up to 50 pages).
As a rule, we’ve been able to obtain Russian journal articles within a week.
Success rate is about 95%.

We’re able to obtain non-Russian references as well (especially from Eastern Europe countries), but success rate is considerably lower – although we do have a patron who keeps turning to us as his last resort once he’s unable to track non-Russian articles and oftentimes we’ve been able to deliver.

6) Russian to English translation service

We charge $0.12/word (English). All translations are being proof-edited by our partner in USA whose mother tongue is American English. His specializations are: pharmaceuticals, chemistry, biotechnology, agrochemicals, medical, and polymers.

His background includes:
- Two Years chemical research at CB Research & Development and Beard Research Inc., Senior Research Chemist
- Eleven years chemical research at DuPont, Senior Research Chemist
- Six years academic teaching and research at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn
· Collaborations with researchers in Germany, Soviet Union and Japan

Further on, here is an example of latest comprehensive search in biochem field. This is just an outline of the job done, but upon inquiry I can provide copies of actual search reports.

Results of the search were submitted to client in following order:

search-report-patents.doc
report-internet.pdf
report-articles.pdf
report-articles-2.pdf
report-articles-2a.pdf
report-foreign journals.pdf

Project scope:

1) Prior art search in Russian patent literature, at $295 per IPC subclass, total two subclasses searched (A61K 31/ and C07C 233/); results delivered as PDF files.
2) Prior art search in other Russian language databases – namely
former USSR countries patent databases and EAPATIS (Eurasian patents), at $295 per search
3) Prior art search in Russian non-patent literature, at $60/hour, total 18 hours spent

Charge for the project was: US$1965.00

There were neither translation nor document delivery services involved in this case.

–
Source: Russian patents blog

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• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys
• Russian patents in English – cheaper than usual?
• Feb 15th: portfolio of Russian patent translations updated
• First-To-File vs First-to-Invent explained, quite nicely
• Translating Chemistry: Poor translation is costly

While success rate is quite high, sometimes we come across a tough case. Such a case I’d like to describe briefly in the post to give you an idea of how much it could differ from computerized oh so easy access to references in the West.

Our patron wrote:

Here is a Russian deposited document, can you help?

Condensation of indole 2-aldehydes with nitroalkanes in liquid ammonia.
Balabushevich, A. G.; Yares’ko, N. S.; Suvorov, N. N.
VINITI 216-76
1976

The inquiry came on Jan.22. Prior to turning to our assistance the patron tried to obtain this document himself but failed.

The same day I email my inquiry to VINITI (it took some time to find an email contact…). No response whatsoever.

On Jan. 25th (Friday) I repeated the inquiry to another email address, and called Moscow. Gradually, matter of search began to clear up – the reference in question should be a manuscript deposited with VINITI back in 1976. Such an old manuscripts are not stored in Moscow, they are kept in a storage somewhere in Moscow region.

My inquiry was accepted for processing on Friday and they told me to call back next Tuesday by evening time – on Tuesdays a regular delivery from the storage is scheduled. In case the document will be found by that time they promised to tell me in what condition it is at the moment – cause manuscript might be in any kind of condition, and the condition would define whether it’d be possible to scan the manuscript or not (“We’ve began offering a scanning service recently” – how’s that for year 2008?!), otherwise it’d be xeroxed and hard copy mailed by regular post.

If on Tuesday there will be no document available, I was instructed to call on Thursday after lunch – there will be another scheduled delivery which occurs twice a week.

If everything right, I’d have to pay for the service by bank transfer (that means another 3 day – at best! – delay). Upon receiving the funds they’d send either electronic copy or hard copy by regular post.

Stars were kind to me, and on Tuesday the manuscript was found.
My polite request to provide an electronic copy caused quite a stir – they told me they’d make an exception for me. All their resources were assigned to achieve the goal – to produce an electronic copy of the manuscript.
As it turned out, resulting files greatly overcome size limits allowed for email correspondence – few kilobytes.

Their access to email is uneasy thing, too – incoming emails are being checked once a day (at best!) or at longer periods, cause computer resources might be assigned to the scanning job.

So, telephone still (as of 2008) remains to be the main tool of communication with …National Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of Russian Academy of Sciences I’d been trying to retrieve manuscript from.

My gratitudes go to the staff of manuscripts department of VINITI who did their absolutely best to help me to obtain the reference I was after – I must admit what my sarcasm is NOT targeted on these kind, attentive and responsive people.

See also:

Portfolio of Russian to English scientific translations????????: we’ve added translations of two Russian scientific articles, this time in the field of Electrical Engineering.

Portfolio of Russian scientific journals search: another two Russian scientific articles found and delivered to our patron.

See also:

Another two articles from Russian scientific journals were resqued from debris of paper archives and given new digital life – upon request for search from our new customer we found and delivered these two documents:

1) Kosachev I.P., Romanov G.V., Plotnikova I.N., Petrova L.M.
Bitumen showings of the rocks of crystalline basement in Tatarstan according to data of Bavlinskaya (N 20020) and Novo-Elkhovskaya (N20009) wells //
Perspectives of oil/gas capacity of crystalline basement on Tatarstan territory and in the Volgo-Kama region. Kazan: New Knowledge, 1998.- P.58-62.

2) “Cyclic nitroureas: synthesis and properties”
Zhilin, V.F.; Rudakov, G..F.; Sinditskii, v.P.; Egorshev, V. Yu; veselova,
Vol.1 p.39-51 2002

It took us 2 and 3 business days respectively to track these articles, arrange it to be scanned and then deliver to our customer as PDF files.

This time though bibliography provived was quite scarce – e.g. about 1st reference our customer knew only following:

BITUMEN SHOWINGS OF THE ROCKS..
KOSACHEV, I
58-62 1998

Still it was enough to track the article down. And I especially enjoy such a document detective service .

Related posts:

• We are looking to obtain a copy of the Russian journal article…
• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys
• First-To-File vs First-to-Invent explained, quite nicely
• Follow-up to Russian scientific and medical literature search post
• Comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature

Density, Viscosity, Surface Tension, and Saturated Vapor Pressure of Liquid
Teplofiz. Svoista Veshchestv Mater. (Thermophysical Properties of Substances and Materials)

Smeshine potokov v krestoobraznykh soedineniyakh truboprovodov
Trudy Leningradskii Tekstil’nyi Institut Imeni S.M. Kirova

Passivatio of contacts and vat residues in production of trichlorosilane
Kremniiorganicheskie Soedineniya, Trudy Soveshchaniya, Feb. 1966 (Organosilicon Compounds, Transactions of the Conference)

“The synthesis of some new bisquaternary ammonium salts with their expected effect on systems reactive to choline,”
Sbornik Nauch. Rabot, Rizhskii Med. Inst.

Related posts:

• Two articles from Russian scientific journals were resqued from debris of paper archives and given new digital life
• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys
• First-To-File vs First-to-Invent explained, quite nicely
• Follow-up to Russian scientific and medical literature search post
• Comprehensive search in Russian patent and non-patent literature

—
1) Effect of some benzimidazole and quinoxaline derivatives on bulbar mechanis
By Tyurenkov, I. N.
Mater., Povolzh. Konf. Fiziol. Uchastiem Biokhim., Farmakol. Morfol., 6th
p.63-4 1973

2) Peripheral mechanisms of action of some vasoactive substances.
Petrov, V. I.
Trudy Volgogradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Meditsinskogo Instituta
p.119-21 1977
—

As of today (Jan 15th), both articles are already delivered to the customer. It took us 3 business days to get first one (“Peripheral mechanisms…”) and 4 days for delivery of 2nd one (“Effect of some benzimidazole…”).

In both cases, none of the articles were available in electronic form. To be able to deliver 1st article we had to contact the author (and he responded promptly! Thanks Prof.Petrov one more time for friendly communication!) – and 2nd article came from Chuvash University (who published conference proceedings) via local sci-tech library connection.

We’re putting these two titles into our Russian scientific and medical literature search portfolio.

Related posts:

• Two articles from Russian scientific journals were resqued from debris of paper archives and given new digital life
• We are looking to obtain a copy of the Russian journal article…
• Latest news on Russian patent search, translation and document detective joys
• Feb 15th: portfolio of Russian patent translations updated
• First-To-File vs First-to-Invent explained, quite nicely

—
1) Effect of some benzimidazole and quinoxaline derivatives on bulbar mechanis
By Tyurenkov, I. N.
Mater., Povolzh. Konf. Fiziol. Uchastiem Biokhim., Farmakol. Morfol., 6th
p.63-4 1973

2) Peripheral mechanisms of action of some vasoactive substances.
Petrov, V. I.
Trudy Volgogradskogo Gosudarstvennogo Meditsinskogo Instituta
p.119-21 1977
—

Well, let’s see how long will it take us to hunt these down (see the followup here).

Actually, I’d like to use this occasion to shed some light on a matter of Russian non-patent literature search – for some reason, we started receiving considerable amount of inquiries for Russian scientific and medical articles search.

Following the latest trend (see our Russian patent translations portfolio and Russian prior art search portfolio), we put up the site a little portfolio of most recent orders we carried out, check it out here: Russian scientific and medical literature document delivery portfolio http://patentsfromru.com/russian-literature-search.html ).

What’s the difference between retrieving scientific articles from US sources and Russian sources? Speaking of USA, virtually all necessary articles one is able to obtain in electronic form (like, PDF) for about $20 per article. But in Russia, it’s totally different: 1)there are no central depository of scientific articles/works and 2)good deal of articles are NOT digitized.

So every time we get an inquiry for delivery of an article from Russian scientific journal or similar work, we embark on a search for library which might have this article, and upon finding it we need to arrange the article to be scanned – so it sure takes some time. Good news is, so far we were able to fill in all inquiries for Russian scientific and medical literature search we ever received.

See also: