Appendix A: Assessment Process

To assist the science agencies, the Subcommittee on Research of the Committee on Fundamental Science (CFS) of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) initiated an "Assessment Process" to gather information and facilitate communication about metrics and other methods for assessing the results of fundamental research.

To begin the Process, a Practitioners' Working Group and the Critical Technologies Institute (CTI) collected material from the Office of Management and Budget, Congressional reports, and other sources to document factual information about new requirements as well as existing assessment methods. The Practitioners' Working Group and CTI reported their findings in a series of background papers (Cozzens 1994 and 1995, Popper 1995, and Wagner 1995).

At a November 1994 workshop, assessment practitioners examined existing methods and identified issues associated with the adaptation of these methods to assessing fundamental science. At a May 1995 colloquium, diverse members of the scientific enterprise from both the public and private sectors (including scientists and decision-makers from the university, industry, and government communities) probed the complexities of the new assessment environment and explored methods that might be used to assess the contributions of fundamental science to national well-being.

The findings of the Assessment Process provided basic building blocks for this paper.

The program participants in the colloquium and workshop and the members of the Practitioners' Working Group are listed in the following pages.

Program Participants, "Colloquium on Assessing the Contribution of Fundamental Science," May 17, 1995

Program Participants, "Workshop on the Metrics of Fundamental Science," November 18, 1994

Practitioners' Working Group on Research Evaluation


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