Last month, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), under guidance of the National Science Board (NSB), published a report—Discovery: R&D Activity and Publications—that reviews the U.S. research and development (R&D) landscape. Although much has remained the same, such as the business sector driving U.S. R&D, other areas are changing, including China’s rapid growth in producing scientific publications.
[Read the full report here | Read NSF’s summary here]
Overall, the U.S. R&D enterprise remains strong, with total expenditures reaching $940 billion in 2023 (up from $892 billion in 2022). However, the report cautions that China is narrowing the gap in many R&D metrics, including in its spending. For example, although the U.S. continues to outspend China, the latter’s gross domestic expenditures on R&D (GERD) growth rate has outpaced the U.S.’s over the past few years.
The business sector accounted for 75 percent of U.S. R&D funding and 78 percent of R&D performance1 in 2023, leading in both categories. The federal government accounted for the second largest percent of U.S. R&D funding that year, with the Department of Defense having the highest R&D obligation followed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In terms of R&D performance, the higher education and federal government sectors followed the business sector. The report credits the business sector with driving R&D performance towards experimental development, in particular.
The report highlights five industries that accounted for 80 percent of business sector funding in 2022: information; chemicals manufacturing; computer and electronic products manufacturing (including semiconductors); professional, scientific, and technical services; and transportation equipment manufacturing.
The report also reviewed the state of global research publishing, noting ongoing concerns with China’s growth in this sector. In 2023, although the U.S. remained a leading producer of high-quality scientific research, it fell behind China in terms of total peer-reviewed science and engineering articles produced. India and Germany ranked third and fourth, respectively. As seen in the chart below, China’s publication output has rapidly grown since 2013, whereas the U.S.’s output has remained relatively stable, raising alarms about the U.S.’s ability to maintain its position as the global leader in R&D. India also saw substantial growth in publication output, while Germany’s numbers remained steady. In 2023, most authors in China published in engineering; in India, most published in information sciences; and in both the U.S. and Germany, most published in the health sciences.
The report begs questions about how the Trump Administration’s science and research policies will affect the U.S. R&D enterprise going forward. For example, how will attacks on scientists/researchers and higher education institutions as well as training grant and program terminations impact our ability to maintain a strong and innovative scientific workforce? In the past, researchers across the world flocked to the U.S. and its world-leading scientific ecosystem; however, as the Administration dismantles that ecosystem, are we likely to see our talent flee elsewhere instead? If our scientific workforce depletes and that of other countries improves, the U.S. will likely see the concerning trends highlighted in this report continue.
- Per the report, “Performance of R&D focuses on the organization or sector that conducts R&D activities, which may be funded from a variety of internal and external sources. R&D funding refers to financial resources that may be devoted to internal R&D or to pay for R&D performed by other organizations or sectors.” ↩︎
