University research is a vital building block of the nation's research and development (R&D) enterprise. While U.S. universities perform just 13 percent of total national R&D, they perform 31 percent of the nation's total research--basic and applied--and 56 percent of the nation's basic research. Because there is broad consensus that university…

An important factor in the success of America's national research system is that federal funds for university-based research are awarded primarily through peer review, which uses panels of scientific experts, or "peers," to evaluate the quality of grant proposals. In this competitive process, proposals compete for resources based on their…