More than 20 agencies contribute to federal investments in basic and applied research, development, and supporting equipment and facilities. According to the FY2003 Federal Science and Technology Budget, the largest research budgets are in the National Institutes of Health ($20.3 billion), NASA ($10.1 billion), the Department of Energy ($8.5 billion), and the National Science Foundation ($3.7 billion). Total federal investments in research and development represent an increase of eight percent over 2002 and more than 34 percent since 2000. Total federal R&D spending has increased 11-fold since records began to be kept in 1949, rising from $940 million to over $100 billion. A few recent statistics illustrate the size and scope of the enterprise.

• In 2001, the National Institutes of Health awarded more than 40,000 competitive and noncompetitive research and development grants worth $14.9 billion to investigators at more than 2,500 research institutions. The average size of an award was $305,000. Over 27,000 individual investigators applied for NIH's competitive awards.
• In the same year, the National Science Foundation received nearly 32,000 new proposals and made awards to about 3,400 or 10.6 percent. The median award amount was $75,000 for a two-and-a-half-year project. This modest figure masks the range of award sizes which rise to over $100 million for specially targeted multi-year, multi-institutional partnership programs.
• A single institution in a single year may receive and manage only a handful of small grants, or, like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, may receive from NSF alone more than 300 awards totaling over $120 million.
• A single investigator may have research funding from multiple public agencies as well as from private or foundation sources - and each sponsor has its own goals, policies, and practices.

The research enterprise is not only large, complex, and important in its own right, it is also embedded in a political, economic, and social environment that exerts strong influences on research topics and priorities, methods and principles, and opportunities for involvement. The White House, congressional committees, academic societies, consumers and citizens, Professional Associates and interest groups all play some role. Figure 1 suggests the complexity and diversity inherent in the research enterprise. It can be thought of as an ongoing cycle of overlapping activities, each involving influential stakeholders in a variety of relationships.

The process of identifying research needs involves all stakeholders and reflects collectively the concerns of society, the priorities of political leaders, and the intellectual commitment to the discovery and pursuit of new knowledge. Selection involves the process of soliciting and encouraging research proposals, evaluating them, and choosing a portfolio of projects that collectively addresses the needs from a variety of perspectives, using different approaches and methods. Research is conducted in a variety of settings by trained investigators whose goals include discovery, testing and validation of concepts and theories, knowledge building within and across disciplines, and the production of new tools, methods, and devices for practical use. Research results are used to advance theoretical knowledge, to generate practical solutions to problems, to train the next generation of research scientists, and to enhance the knowledge and education of the public. None of these activities is in the domain of a single stakeholder. As a result, each domain can encompass competing values, delicate negotiation, and ongoing conflict.

Figure 1. The U.S. Research Enterprise