This is the file mentioned in my comment on Xuanhe Zhao's blog

Within the last two weeks the US National Science Foundation (NSF) published not one but two studies on (a) the attitudes of scientists and engineers to the changing world of publication, and (b) the relative global productibity of US science & engineering as measured by journal publication.    

These are not dense 500 page reports, but short, readable (10-15 min.).  I think iMechanica readers will find them relevant and interesting:

Springer - in an attempt to get customers I suppose - are offering free access to the journal Computational Mechanics, but only for March 2007.

You can access all articles in Computational Mechanics back to vol 1/1, e.g. the first article

E. Reissner
Some aspects of the variational principles problem in elasticity
Volume 1, Issue - 1, First Page - 3, Last Page - 9
DOI - 10.1007/BF00298634
Link - http://www.springerlink.com/content/t52w761088542m68

To get the free access (for the rest of March) go to
http://scientific-direct.net/c.asp?id=650015&c=7fbfc8d9b40ac978&l=31