Abstract
On average, one out of five search reports issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) contains a non-patent literature (NPL) document citation, mainly from scholarly papers. More than half of all search reports in chemistry and biotechnology cite NPL. Hence, consideration of NPL is essential for ensuring the quality of the prior art searches. In this paper, the EPO resources for searching and retrieving academic papers are presented and an overview of dedicated internet search engines for academic publications is given. Some specifics of NPL search strategies are illustrated and a short note on some legal issues concerning the publication date is also included.
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