The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 (Pub. L. No. 96-517, Dec. 12, 1980) has fostered linkages between universities and businesses by giving universities, other nonprofit organizations, and small businesses the option to retain title to the inventions they make in the course of federally funded research. Before 1980, federal agencies generally retained title rights to any inventions made in the course of the research they funded. Funding recipients seeking to commercialize such inventions often faced long delays and uncertainty when they asked the funding agencies to waive their rights. Since 1980, universities have upgraded and expanded their technology licensing efforts, particularly in such fields as biomedicine and computer technology. Federal agencies and industry also substantially increased their funding of university research—federal funding grew from $8 billion (in 2001 dollars) in fiscal year 1980 to $19.2 billion in fiscal year 2001, and industry funding grew from $461 million (in 2001 dollars) to $2.2 billion during this period. For the Association of University Technology Managers’ survey for fiscal year 2001, U.S. university respondents reported that they (1) executed 3,282 technology licenses and options, (2) received $852 million in gross license income, and (3) held equity in 348, or 70 percent, of the 494 start-up companies that were formed around university-licensed technology. (See app. II for information from our survey about universities’ licensing activities with start-up companies.) OMB Circular A-110 establishes uniform requirements for the administration of federal grants and cooperative agreements with institutions of higher education, hospitals, and other nonprofit organizations. For example, the circular requires that funding recipients submit performance reports to the funding agency at least annually, with a final technical report normally due within 90 days after the grant’s termination or expiration. However, the circular provides flexibility by allowing the agencies to specify the content of these reports or to waive the final technical report. The National Science and Technology Council, established by Executive Order 12881 in November 1993, coordinates the development of governmentwide science and technology policies. For example, the Council’s Subcommittee on Research Business Models is examining the effects of the changing nature of scientific research on business models for conducting federally funded research. In addition, 7 federal agencies, 84 research universities, and 6 other research institutions participate in the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP), which seeks to streamline the administrative processes for implementing OMB Circular A-110. In July 1995, the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes NIH, promulgated regulations on Objectivity in Research and NSF revised its Investigator Financial Disclosure Policy to establish consistent requirements for universities and most other grantees to identify and manage financial conflicts of interest. Specifically, the NIH and NSF standards require that funding recipients implement policies for (1) scientists to disclose any “significant financial interests” to an official designated by the institution and (2) institutions to determine whether a real or apparent conflict exists and, if so, take appropriate actions to manage, mitigate, or eliminate the identified conflict. Under these regulations, a conflict of interest exists when the institution’s designated official determines that a significant financial interest could directly and significantly affect the research design, conduct, or reporting. The financial benefit may result, for example, from an investigator owning stock in a company providing the research funding, or from an investigator having ownership interest in a company that may profit from a university invention. Conflicting interests are not necessarily unacceptable, and many can be managed through disclosure and oversight. The NIH regulation exceeds the scope of NSF’s policy in some areas. For example, it requires that universities and other funding recipients report every identified possible conflict of interest, while NSF requires that institutions report only those conflicts that have not been resolved. (See app. III for a more detailed comparison of the NIH and NSF requirements.) Federal agencies rely primarily on the university scientists who receive research grants to make their research results available to the public. Each agency encourages grantees to publish research results in the scientific literature, a practice that is steeped in academic tradition. Agriculture, Defense, Energy, EPA, and NASA also disseminate the results of the research they fund by posting scientists’ final technical reports on their Web sites, and Education is considering whether to post research results. While NIH, NSF, and Education do not post research results on their Web sites, they post certain grant information, including abstracts submitted at the time of the award. The eight agencies we examined rely on university scientists to disseminate the results of the research they fund, and their policies explicitly encourage principal investigators and universities to disseminate those results through presentations at scientific conferences and publishing in scientific journals. (See table 1.) Similarly, FDP’s model terms and conditions for research grants state, “The recipient is expected to publish or otherwise make publicly available the results of the work conducted under the award.” Publishing federally funded research results also is vital to university scientists because research publications are key to obtaining future grant awards, gaining professional recognition, and achieving tenure. Agencies also indirectly encourage the dissemination of research results through their grant award practices. Officials at each agency said that peer review panels consider the publication record of the applicant (usually the principal investigator) in assessing the grant proposal. NSF, for example, requires that principal investigators requesting grant renewals include a list of publications generated with NSF’s prior support. Agriculture officials told us that they are less likely to recommend renewal applications for continued funding if the funded project’s results have not been published. Publications indicate to the agencies that the principal investigator has made progress in his/her research and that the results are available to other scientists in the field. However, a research project may not generate publishable results because leading scientific journals require that manuscripts be reviewed by other experts in the field to validate the research findings prior to publication. The scientific journal may reject a manuscript because, for example, the reviewers conclude that the work adds little value to the field of study, the results are inadequately supported, or the research failed. All but five of the university respondents reported that they have a policy or standard operating procedure that addresses whether sponsors are allowed to delay the publication of research results under certain circumstances, such as reviewing a manuscript for possible proprietary information or for intellectual property. Three universities—the California Institute of Technology, Howard University, and Iowa State University—reported that they do not permit any publication delays, while 160 universities allow a sponsor to review a manuscript prior to publication—typically from 30 to 90 days. However, 10 universities allow a longer period of up to either 120 days or 180 days, and 1 university allows up to 365 days for the sponsor to review a manuscript for proprietary information. Generally, research sponsors appear to adhere to the universities’ time frames for reviewing manuscripts. Administrators reported the following: Fourteen universities were aware of one or more cases during the past 3 years of a sponsor delaying the publication of unclassified and nonsensitive research beyond the university’s time limits. Three universities were aware of one or more cases during the past 3 years of a federal sponsor delaying the publication of research involving sensitive, but not classified, information beyond the university’s time limits. Thirteen universities were aware of one or more cases during the past 3 years of a federal sponsor blocking, or attempting to block, publication of research involving sensitive, but not classified, information. However, several university administrators noted during the pretest of our survey instrument that publication delays can occur without the university’s knowledge if the sponsor and the research team reach an accommodation without notifying university administrators. As shown in table 2, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, EPA, and NASA use their Web sites to post research results, in some form, for grants that they issue. For example, EPA posts summaries of annual and final technical reports on its National Center for Environmental Research Web site. These summaries include research accomplishments or findings, the reporting date, EPA agreement number, title, investigators, institution, research category, project period, objective of research, progress summary, conclusions (if applicable), publications/presentations, future activities, supplemental keywords, and other relevant Web sites. EPA’s Web site also allows users to search for publications associated with a particular grant. NASA primarily posts abstracts of final technical reports on its Web site, although NASA plans to post mainly full technical reports in 2004. While Education, NIH, and NSF do not post research results on their Web sites, they post a project abstract written at the time of award stating how the research will be conducted and what researchers hope to accomplish. In November 2002, the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (Pub. L. No. 107-279) established the Institute of Education Sciences and directed it to widely disseminate the findings and results of scientifically valid research in education. An Education official told us that after the members of the Institute’s National Board of Educational Sciences have been appointed and confirmed, Education will consider how best to fulfill this requirement, particularly for the results of Institute-funded research that have not been peer reviewed. The official noted that the Institute’s National Center for Education Evaluation currently disseminates the results of research performed under contract either through research publications or through its Web site after the results have been peer reviewed. In addition to using their own Web sites, several agencies participate in collaborative Web-based efforts to share information, including research results. For example, Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information maintains Federal R&D Project Summaries, a Web-based portal to summary and award information for Energy, NIH, and NSF research grants. The office also maintains GrayLIT Network, a portal to full-text reports located on the Energy, Defense, EPA, and NASA information systems. In addition, an interagency working group from 11 major science agencies recently initiated the science.gov Web site, which provides a gateway to federal research and development results and other scientific information.