Research funding data
Where US research funding actually goes
Every year the National Science Foundation asks American universities what they spent on research, and every year they answer. That is the HERD Survey — public, comparable across institutions, and almost unusable in the form NSF ships it.
If you came here looking for one institution
You probably wanted a number, not an explainer.
We used to publish a page for each of a hundred-odd institutions, and each was a headline figure with very little around it. HERD data is worth more than that: the useful questions are comparative — against whom, on what source of funds, moving which way — and those need an interface rather than a page.HERD Visualizer is where you look one up.
What the data answers
Four questions HERD is genuinely good at
Find where an institution actually stands
Total R&D expenditure, national rank, and the change from last year — for any institution in the survey. The number people quote at conferences is usually the total; the interesting one is the direction.
See where the money comes from
HERD separates federal, state and local, business, nonprofit and institutional funds. Two universities with the same headline figure can have completely different exposure when a federal budget moves, and only the breakdown shows it.
Choose your own peer set
A national ranking answers a question almost nobody is asking. The useful comparison is against the eight or ten institutions you actually compete with for faculty and for awards.
Read a decade rather than a year
Ten years of expenditure makes a single strong year read as what it is, instead of as a trajectory somebody builds a strategic plan on.
Why a funding software company publishes this
Benchmarking and discovery are one conversation
HERD tells you where your institution stands against the peers you chose and where the gap is. It is very good at that and completely silent about what to do next.
The answer to "what do we do next" is a department, a set of researchers in it, and funding opportunities they can realistically win. That isFundFit's job — matches scored against a researcher's actual publication record, screened for eligibility before anybody reads them, delivered where faculty already work.
HERD Visualizer PRO is included at no additional cost with a FundFit institutional subscription. It is also sold on its own, and plenty of institutions only ever want that half.
- HERD VisualizerWhere you stand, by source of funds, against a peer set you choose
- FundFitWhat the faculty in that gap should go after next
- Streamlyne ResearchThe proposals and awards that follow, on one record
Questions
What people ask about HERD
What is the NSF HERD Survey?
The Higher Education Research and Development Survey — the US National Science Foundation's annual census of research and development expenditure at American colleges and universities. Institutions report what they actually spent, broken down by source of funds and by field of science. It is the closest thing there is to a common yardstick for the size of a research enterprise, it is collected every year, and it is entirely public.
Is the data free?
Yes. NSF publishes it. HERD Visualizer does not change the numbers or add any of its own — it is an interface for data that has always been public and has never been easy to work with. If you would rather download the tables and build your own pivot, that is a completely legitimate answer and NSF will give them to you.
Does HERD measure research quality?
No, and it is worth being blunt about that. HERD measures dollars spent. It says nothing about publications, citations, patents or impact, and an institution can raise its HERD number without any of those improving. Treat it as a measure of scale and of funding mix, not of how good the research is.
How current is it?
HERD runs on an annual cycle with a reporting lag, so the most recent published year is typically the fiscal year before last. That is fine for benchmarking and trend work, which is what the data is for, and misleading if you are trying to describe what is happening in your office this quarter.
Do you have a page for my institution?
Not any more. We used to publish a page per institution and they were thin — a number and a headline. The data behind them is far better used interactively, so those URLs now bring you here and HERD Visualizer is where you look your institution up. If a static page for your institution is genuinely what you need, tell us and we will hear the argument.
What does this have to do with funding discovery?
They are the two halves of the same conversation. HERD tells you where your institution stands and where the gap is; FundFit puts scored, eligibility-screened opportunities in front of the faculty in the department that gap is in. HERD Visualizer PRO is included with a FundFit institutional subscription, which is how most institutions end up with both.