Progress toward the ideal research enterprise of the future is further complicated by emerging trends that directly challenge the enterprise. These include new approaches to conducting research, increasing demands for government accountability and management performance, and misalignment of policies and practices within the enterprise.

Interdisciplinarity and research partnerships--Research has traditionally been conducted by individual investigators focused on a single discipline or sub-discipline. However, today's societal needs and scientific challenges demand interdisciplinary studies to uncover new knowledge, not discoverable using traditional approaches. Several major research programs have been launched recently that emphasize cross-disciplinary research partnerships. These include the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure sponsored by NSF, the Biodefense Program at the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases at NIH, and the Multidisciplinary Research Program, sponsored by the Department of Defense's University Research Initiative (URI). Unfortunately, regardless of the logic and benefit of this new approach to science, interdisciplinary research partnerships are more difficult to form and manage than traditional studies. They are harder to assess and harder to communicate about. The formal structures of the research enterprise have not been organized to support an interdisciplinary approach. Universities are organized along traditional disciplines. Typically, grants making organizations and professional societies are organized in the same way. Traditional disciplines also largely define the reward structures and careers of individual scientists.

Interdisciplinary research is not only complicated, it is expensive. It involves higher costs for coordination and communication. It requires reaching out beyond traditional models and seeking new ways to amass and deploy resources and to build and manage research teams. Much of the burden of these new requirements falls to scientists and their organizations. They must reach beyond their long established, discipline-based networks to develop a language and a common framework for thinking about the areas where disciplines do or could overlap. To establish a partnership, they must find funders who are also interested in, willing to, and capable of supporting interdisciplinary research. Research funders who seek interdisciplinary proposals face the difficulty of evaluating the ideas either directly or through peer review panels that understand this new way of working. For the investigators, the reward systems of their universities may not recognize or reward this kind of work with tenure and promotion.

Increasing accountability and performance requirements--The trend in the federal government toward increased accountability and performance measurement has had a general effect on the research enterprise for many years. Specific legislation focusing on increased accountability and efficiency in the research enterprise, per se, is a more recent phenomenon. For example, the Government Paperwork Reduction Act of 1993 is focused on overall government efficiency, while the Federal Financial Management Assistance Improvement Act of 1999 (PL 106-107) is specifically focused on increasing the accountability and the efficiency of research programs. These are just two of many federal laws and policies that circumscribe the management activities of research agencies.

The President's Management Agenda is pushing all federal agencies to improve their performance in five critical areas: financial management, management of human capital, competitive sourcing, budget and performance integration, and expanded use of e-government. As a result, changes are being made in management models, work cycles, processes, and system designs within federal grants-making organizations. Because responsiveness and accountability are linked to risk management, research agencies are struggling to find useful ways to address these requirements in the context of long-term, uncertain investments in science. What needs to be measured, how it can be measured, and what the measurement tells us, are questions being considered at many organizations within the enterprise. At the same time, these initiatives may encourage agencies to better meet another long-standing need--to communicate in plain language about the value and the progress of science.

Misalignment of multiple policies and operating cycles-- The research enterprise invests regularly and heavily in overcoming or compensating for misalignments in the policy and regulatory environment and in the key cycles that govern work throughout the enterprise.

The policy and regulatory frameworks governing organizations throughout the enterprise are increasing in both quantity and variety. A single granting agency applies its own policies and regulations, while researchers and research institutions must comply with the rules of each granting agency they work with. Identifying, understanding, and reconciling the differences is becoming a significant burden. Many of the differences are based on unique requirements or conditions for individual granting organizations. Others are evidence of the uncharted evolution of business practices. The process of identifying, understanding, and working appropriately with these differences is costly and frustrating to most research institutions.

Repetitive but misaligned business cycles regularly challenge the enterprise. The federal budget process frequently informs granting agency program officers late in the process about how much money they will have available to them. As a result, they have to speculate about funding as they work with researchers to identify and cultivate new ideas, build innovative partnerships, and seek the wisest investment of funds. If funding levels are out of line with these discussions, either valuable time is lost working on ideas that cannot be supported or not enough groundwork is laid for programs that then need to be launched quickly. In the latter case, research scientists must be brought quickly into the pipeline through calls for proposals and reviewers. These narrow windows of opportunity limit participation and force incomplete proposal development, especially for programs that seek partnerships across disciplines or institutions. On a more operational level, award decisions are often made at awkward points in the academic year when investigators and graduate students have already committed to other work, thus delaying the start date or the full staffing of funded projects.