THE INQUIRY 



TO THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY 



SENDING OF THE INQUIRY LETTER 



As the Foreword has indicated, the purpose of 

 this Report is to alert responsible persons in 

 government and the public to critical issues that 

 are currently affecting or will soon affect the 

 conduct of research in this country. In order to 

 determine what these issues are, the National 

 Science Board contacted a large segment of the 

 research community in the United States, and 

 asked them what they see their problems to be. 



Thus a letter of inquiry was sent to a selected 

 set of persons responsible for the direction of 

 research throughout the scientific community. 1 

 Each person contacted was asked to suggest 

 "the two most critical issues/problems facing 

 fundamental (long-term, basic) research, as you 

 see it, in the near-term future." "What critical 

 issues/problems will condition scientific and 

 technological research. . . and will decrease its 

 effectiveness unless properly addressed?" The 

 respondents were intentionally given a great 

 deal of freedom in the suggestions they might 

 make. The only limitation was that the planned 

 Report "is not as much concerned with dollar 

 support as with circumstances in the in- 

 stitutional, managerial or policy environment 

 which will influence the productivity of work- 

 ing scientists and engineers." 



For the purposes of this inquiry, the scientific 

 community was divided into four "sectors": 

 university, industry, Government, and in- 

 dependent research institutes (IRI's). The 

 Government sector comprises all Federal 



laboratories, whether they are Federal in- 

 tramural laboratories or Federally Funded 

 Research and Development Centers (FFRDC's). 

 FFRDC's are contractor-operated R&D 

 organizations established to meet the particular 

 needs of a Federal agency. Examples of FFRDC's 

 are Kitt Peak National Observatory and RAND 

 Corporation. Independent research institutes 

 (IRI's] are separately incorporated nonprofit 

 organizations operating under the direction of 

 their own controlling bodies and performing 

 R&D in any of a wide variety of fields. 



The inquiry letter was sent to the presidents 

 and vice-presidents for research 2 at a selected 

 set of universities, namely those that were 

 classified by the Carnegie Commission on 

 Higher Education as Research Universities I or 

 Research Universities II. Research Universities 

 I are the 52 leading universities in terms of 

 Federal financial support and production of 

 Ph.D.'s. Research Universities II are the 40 

 additional universities that are leading in- 

 stitutions with respect to either Federal support 

 or production of Ph.D.'s.' 



In addition, each university vice-president 

 for research was asked to supply the names of 

 the chairmen of five of his most active 

 departments in science and engineering. 4 The 



The complete text of this letter is shown in Appendix B. 



J Titles fur comparable positions vary among institutions. 

 For a fuller discussion, see Appendix A. 



3 For the exact definition, see Carnegie Commission on 

 Higher Education, A Classification of Institutions of Higher 

 Education (Berkeley, 1973], pp. 1-2. The names of these 

 institutions are listed on pp. 9-15 of that publication and 

 also in Appendix C of this Report. 



J The letter employed is included in Appendix B. 



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