84 



60 / SUPPLEMENT 2 



Boxn.5 

 Categories of R&D Performers 



Thousands of institutions in the United States conduct R&D, funded by government, in- 

 dustry, state and local governments, private foundations, funds from colleges and universities, 

 and other sources. 



Industrial research is carried out by thousands of firms, large and small, although some 

 100 large firms account for more than 50 percent of all industrial R&D spending. The largest 

 performers of industrial R&D are the aircraft, communications equipment, chemical, and com- 

 puter and office equipment industries. 



Nearly every academic institution conducts some research. However, about 100 univer- 

 sities account for more than 80 percent of all academic R&D spending. 



It is estimated that there are more than 700 federal laboratories including FFRDCs. How- 

 ever, a much smaller number of these are of substantial size, with a few dozen conducting 

 most of the R&D done in such facilities (see Box n.6).' 



Other nonprofit institutions also make important contributions to national R&D perfor- 

 mance. These include medical research institutions not associated with academic institutions, 

 nonprofit research organizations such as Battelie Memorial Institute and Southwest Research 

 Institute, and others. 



'Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology, Trends in the Structure of Fed- 

 eral Science Support (Washington, D.C.: Office of Science andTechnology Policy, 1992). 



Box n.6 

 Types of Federal Laboratories 



Government-owned, government-operated laboratory, or GOGO—n laboratory' owned, 

 operated, and funded by the federal government and staffed by federal employees. Examples 

 include MST laboratories, NIH intramural laboratories, the National Institute of Occupational 

 Safety and Health, and the USDA Peoria Regional Laboratory. 



• Government-owned, contractor-operated laboratory, or GOCO — a laboratory owned 

 and funded by the federal government and operated and staffed by a private contractor. The 

 contractor may be a profit-making firm, a nonprofit organization, or one or more academic 

 institutions. Examples include all of the DOE national laboratories mentioned below. 



• National Laboratory — a large, multipurpose laboratory of the Department of Energy, 

 including the major weapons laboratories — Los Alamos, Sandia, and Livermore — as well as 

 Argonne, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley, and others. (National Laboratories are 

 one type of FFRDC — see next item.) 



• Federally funded research and development center, or FFRDC — a particular form of 

 long-term government contract with a nongovernmental organization to staff and operate a 

 laboratory or other research center that is funded in whole or in substantial part by the federal 

 govenmient. Some FFRDCs are agreements to operate GOCOs, while others are contracts that 

 support contractor-owned and contractor-staffed organizations. FFRDCs are operated by aca- 

 demic institutions (e.g., the Lincoln Laboratory by Massachusetts Institute of Technology) or 

 nonprofit organizations (e.g.. Project Air Force at RAND), acting alone or in consortia, as well 

 as by profit-making firms (e.g., Sandia National Laboratories and Oak Ridge National Labora- 

 tory operated by Lockheed-Martin Corporation). 



