Take a Look at the Science Research Supported by Federal Funders

Frequent readers of the blog and the Extramural Nexus know that RePORT is your first stop on the way to finding information about NIH funded research, as well as data on trends in NIH funding and the biomedical workforce. But did you know NIH is collaborating with other agencies to create Federal RePORTER, a single web portal that allows you to search federal-funded science projects across multiple agencies? While the site is still in alpha testing, we’ve recently added a new partner agency’s data, so I thought it would be a great time to introduce you to this resource.

The project is part of the STAR METRICS® program and supports the program’s goal of linking the federal government’s scientific research investments to outcomes and outputs (e.g., patents, citations, workforce outcomes). A fed-wide database would allow us, and the public, to see the impact of funding, and be a great collaborative tool to find investigators working in similar areas, find reviewers, and see scientific advances in specific fields across agencies. We also believe it will serve as a centralized research resource that will facilitate scientific study of the federal government’s investments in research. You’ll see a familiar search interface if you’ve ever run a search on NIH RePORTER (or projectreporter.nih.gov). While RePORTER includes all NIH-funded research, and research projects from other organizations that currently use our electronic Research Administration (or eRA) systems, Federal RePORTER includes those agencies and several more. The database includes research projects funded by several Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) operating divisions (NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, Administration for Children and Families, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs of the Department of Defense, and the latest addition the United States Department of Agriculture.

Just like in NIH RePORTER, you can do advanced text searches, search across all or only a few agencies of your choice, pick your fiscal years of interest, and more. Because some agencies use their own systems, it is important to note that data may not be refreshed at the same schedule as NIH RePORTER data.

Let’s try a sample search to ways Federal RePORTER can help you understand Federal research funding.. Here I’ve searched 2013 data for the phrase “asthma”:

Once you get a project list you can either click through for more project information, or use the tabs right above the search results list to further explore the data. For example, you can visualize the number of projects by the state where the research is being performed…

…Or by organization, congressional year, fiscal year (if applicable), and soon, by federal agency. You can also choose to display a summary by the amount of funding, rather than a summary based on the number of projects. And, as on RePORTER, results can be presented as different chart types, or exported to PowerPoint or Excel files.

The Circles tab helps you dive further down into your project list by showing the project search results organized by associated keywords. Click on any of the highlighted dots to read more about a particular project:

And, you can also view your search results by location by selecting the Map tab, and zoom in to see funded projects near you.

The long term vision of this project is to include products like publications, patents, SciENcv data, etc. We’d love to hear your thoughts about whether we are headed in the right direction, so send us your feedback on your experiences using this tool thus far.

And last but not least, I want to give props to our team and all the agencies that are “STAR METRICS®”. This effort clearly demonstrates how data and information about our programs become more powerful when they fuse together to tell the story of science and research across the nation and the world.