Consolidated Glossary
Summary:
NSF by the Numbers
NSF by the Numbers includes award, proposal and budget data. All the views in the dashboard are interactive, with the exception of trend lines.
Selecting the summary metrics above the trend line will update the title and data of all views except for Funding Rate. Selecting Funding Rate will not refresh the dashboard and will not update any metrics.
Metrics by State: In the top right pane, a map view shows the currently selected metric broken out by Quartiles, with the density of color representing higher metric values as indicated in the legend.
There are two filters available in this view:
Total / Per Capita – Per Capita shows the metric selected divided by the population for each state (in millions of people) for a normalized comparison across states with different populations. The population source is the United States Census Bureau’s "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico," and calculations are based on the population for the fiscal year selected in global filters. Total shows the metric value with no further calculations.
Map / Bar Graph – this filter enables the user to toggle between a map view (default) or a bar chart to show the metrics for states.
Campuses: The dashboard occasionally breaks out institutions into campuses that the State Fact Sheets combine into one.
Directorates: The dashboard excludes NSF’s operational directorates and the contracts that they fund, making totals slightly lower for some states than those shown in the State Fact Sheets.
Institution Factsheet
The Institution Factsheet displays basic information about an institution at the top of the page. This includes its city and state, Minority Serving Institution (MSI) status, whether it is an Emerging Research Institution (ERI), and if it is located within an EPSCoR jurisdiction. Below this are the proposal and award details in four bulleted sections
Agency Priority Goal
Agency Priority Goal displays both the number and proportion of proposals received 1) with principal investigators from groups underrepresented in STEM and 2) from underserved institutions by 10 percent over the FY 2020 baselines.
Terms and Definitions:
Minority Serving Institutions (MSI): NSF maintains the following set of indicator variables designed to identify institutions of higher education that serve minority populations or populations underrepresented in STEM associated with proposals, awards, or obligations.
“Disabled Serving, High African American Enrollment (HAAE), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Hispanic Serving, High American Indian Serving, Native Alaskan Serving, Native Hawaiian Serving, Pacific Islander Serving, or Tribal Colleges, Majority Minority Serving and Universities”.
Definitions for these variables originate from federal legislation, most of which from the Higher Education Act. External data on institutional characteristics and student enrollment sourced from the Department of Education’s Integrate Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) are used to construct these indicators.
Note- These designations are not used to determine eligibility.
Emerging Research Institutions (ERI): The CHIPS and Science Act defines an ERI as "an institution of higher education with an established undergraduate or graduate program that has less than $50,000,000 in Federal research expenditures" (see 42 U.S. Code § 18901 - Definitions). NSF uses expenditure data reported by institutions to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics through the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. The institutions can be classified as: "Emerging Research Institution", "Non- Emerging Research Institutions". When NSF is unable to reliably match the institution to HERD data, the ERI classification is listed as "Unknown".
Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR): The EPSCoR program pursues a mission to enhance the research competitiveness of targeted jurisdictions (state, territory, or commonwealth) by strengthening science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) capacity and capability through a diverse portfolio of investments from talent development to local infrastructure. The EPSCoR program envisions its jurisdictions as recognized contributors to the national and global STEM research enterprise. More information be found at: Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) | NSF - National Science Foundation
Principal Investigator/Co-Principal Investigator: A Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI is defined as "the individual(s) designated by the proposer, and approved by NSF, who will be responsible for the scientific or technical direction of the project. NSF does not infer any distinction in scientific stature among multiple PIs, whether referred to as PI or co-PI. If more than one, the first one listed will serve as the contact PI, with whom all communications between NSF program officials and the project relating to the scientific, technical, and budgetary aspects of the project should take place. The PI and any identified co-PIs, however, will be jointly responsible for submission of the requisite project reports.
All PIs and co-PIs are expected to have significant intellectual input to the project. In the event a PI must leave a project it is expected that the remaining co-PI(s) could continue to direct the project and submit the requisite reports.
Funding Rate: Funding Rate is the count of new competitive awards divided by the number of competitive proposals acted upon in the fiscal years shown.
Proposals Evaluated: The number of new and renewal requests for funding which received a final award or decline decision in the fiscal year shown.
New Awards Funded: The number of new (competitive) awards made in a given fiscal year. These include new and renewal requests for funding.
NSF Funded Institutions: The number of awardee institutions receiving funding in a given year. This count reflects direct NSF appropriations and does not include NSF’s administrative accounts.
Award Obligations: NSF direct appropriations obligated in the fiscal year. Amounts shown do not include NSF’s administrative accounts.
Fiscal Year - Allows users to filter data from specific fiscal years, ranging from 2011 to 2024. It is based on fiscal year of proposal decision or fiscal year of obligation.