NSF Industrial Research and Development Information System - Historical Data 1953-98 Browse Tables by Year Browse Tables by Topic Search Tables
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The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Industrial Research and Development Information System (IRIS) links an online interface to a historical database with more than 2,500 statistical tables containing all industrial research and development (R&D) data published by NSF since 1953. These tables are drawn from the results of NSF's annual Survey of Industrial Research and Development, the primary source for national-level data on U.S. industrial R&D.

The Survey of Industrial Research and Development Historical Database is a collection of all of the statistics produced and published from the 1953-1998 cycles of the annual Survey of Industrial Research and Development. The database was developed for use by the science, engineering, academic, industrial, and policy making communities to build knowledge of the historical trends in and inform current discussions about the levels of industrial R&D. The survey provides national estimates of the total expenditures on R&D performed within the United States by industrial firms, whether U.S. or foreign owned. It is a sample survey that intends to include or represent all R&D-performing companies, either publicly or privately held. Tabulations from the survey contain R&D statistics by industry, size of company, source of funds, character of R&D, R&D as a percentage of net sales, and R&D contracted to outside organizations and performed outside the United States. They also contain estimates of the sales and total employment of R&D-performing companies, employment of R&D scientists and engineers, and statistics by state.

The database contains the tabulations resulting from the survey since its inception in 1953 through 1998. Before the development of the database, tabulations from surveys prior to 1991 were available only on paper because electronic versions of the annual reports only exist for 1991 through the latest cycle of the survey. These reports are available elsewhere on the Division of Science Resources Studies web site at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/indus/.

The database contains statistics only through 1998. The reason for this is NSF's industry R&D statistics for 1953-1998 were classified using the same industry coding scheme, the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. Beginning with the statistics from the 1999 survey, a new coding scheme is being used. Statistics for 1999 and later are classified using the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS). (To give data users a bridge between the two coding systems, several tables that reclassify SIC industries for 1997 and 1998 into the new NAICS industries are included in Research and Development in Industry: 1999.)

The IRIS/Survey of Industrial Research and Development Historical Database 1953-1998 system resembles a databank more than a traditional database system. Rather than firm-specific microdata, it contains the most comprehensive collection of historical national industrial R&D statistics currently available. The database contains over 2,500 tables in Excel spreadsheet format that are easily accessible either by defining various measures (e.g., total R&D) and dimensions (e.g., size of company) of specific research topics or by querying the report in which the tables were first published. The database does not contain microdata because the Bureau of the Census, NSF's collection and tabulation agent, conducts the survey under Title 13 of the United States Code, which prohibits publication or release of data or statistics that may reveal information about individual respondents. Consequently, as in many of the tables published on paper and on the web, some estimates in the database spreadsheets have been withheld to avoid possible disclosure of information about operations of individual companies. Also, the system houses already-prepared spreadsheets that track about two dozen major survey items from the first to the last years they were part of the survey. Again, the system is designed to make these longitudinal tables available via the user-friendly IRIS system.

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