Online business information solution provider Alacra Inc. this week launched Research Recap, a resource geared toward the investment community and professional services firms. The site is built on a blogging platform and identifies, highlights and links to top research reports issued daily by industry and financial analysts, professional services firms and governmental agencies. Access is free, but paid content (which is password-protected) is also available.

Among the research reports Research Recap will initially track are Academic Research, Credit Research, Economic Research, Equity Research, Industry Research, Market Research and Public Sector. RSS feeds are available for each category. Users can search by keyword, company name or other terms to access an archive of posts with links to the original reports.

Research Recap editors determine what content to post depending on what they feel is the most relevant to customers. Some posts are related to current news or market events, while others address specific business trends. For instance, during the pre-launch beta phase, Research Recap featured research about the sub-prime mortgage crisis from sources such as Moody's, CreditSights, the International Monetary Fund, Oxford Analytics and PIMCO.

This is a really interesting concept. With the clutter of information available on the web, having one site dedicated to aggregating these often-lengthy reports into an organized and easy to search and find fashion will undoubtedly be valuable to many customers. Many users prefer to receive the bulk of their information in one place and Research Recap has been designed to become such a destination. While many users will likely know the kind of information they are looking for, chances are they will eventually welcome input from Research Recap editors on the latest news and trends they need to gain knowledge about.