Glossary
Abilene: A high-performance network dedicated to research led by a consortium of universities, governments, and private industry; often called Internet2.
Academic doctoral S&E workforce: Includes those with a U.S. doctorate in an S&E field employed in 2- or 4-year colleges or universities in the following positions: full and associate professors (referred to as "senior faculty"); assistant professors and instructors (referred to as "junior faculty"); postdocs; other full-time positions such as lecturers, adjunct faculty, research associates, and administrators; and part-time positions of all kinds.
Academic institution: In the "Financial Resources for Academic R&D" section of this chapter, an academic institution is generally defined as an institution that has a doctoral program in science or engineering, is a historically black college or university that expends any amount of separately budgeted R&D in S&E, or is some other institution that spends at least $150,000 for separately budgeted R&D in S&E. Elsewhere in the chapter, this term encompasses any accredited institution of higher education.
Asia-10: Asia-10 includes China (including Hong Kong), India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand.
Coauthored articles: In the "Outputs of S&E Research: Articles and Patents" section of this chapter, a paper is considered coauthored only if its authors have different institutional affiliations or are from separate departments of the same institution. See institutional author.
Cyberinfrastructure: Infrastructure based on distributed computer, information, and communications technology.
Federal obligations: Dollar amounts for orders placed, contracts and grants awarded, services received, and similar transactions during a given period, regardless of when funds were appropriated or payment was required.
Federally funded research and development center (FFRDC): R&D-performing organization exclusively or substantially financed by the federal government, either to meet particular R&D objectives or, in some instances, to provide major facilities at universities for research and associated training purposes. Each FFRDC is administered either by an industrial firm, a university, or a nonprofit institution.
Fractional counting: A method of counting articles based on authorship attribution. Fractional counting divides the credit for an article with authors from more than one institution or country among the collaborating institutions or countries, based on the proportion of their participating departments or institutions. This method is generally used for article and citation counts.
Index of highly cited articles: A country’s share of the world’s top 1% of cited articles divided by its world share of articles during a given period.
Index of international collaboration: A country’s rate of collaboration with another country divided by the other country’s rate of international coauthorship.
Institutional author: Designation of authorship according to the author’s institutional affiliation at the time of publication. Institutional authorship is used to determine the number of institutional authors an article has for purposes of article counts. Multiple authors from the same department of an institution are considered as one institutional author. See fractional counting and whole counting.
National Lambda Rail: A national fiber optic infrastructure supporting multiple networks for the research community.
Net assignable square feet (NASF): Unit for measuring research space. NASF is the sum of all areas on all floors of a building assigned to, or available to be assigned to, an occupant for a specific use, such as research or instruction. NASF is measured from the inside faces of walls.
Research space: The space used for sponsored R&D activities at academic institutions that is separately budgeted and accounted for.
Tape year: The year an article entered the publication database, which may be later than the year the article was published.
Underrepresented minority: Demographic category including blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians/Alaska Natives, groups considered to be underrepresented in academic institutions.
Whole counting: A method of counting articles based on authorship attribution. Whole counting assigns each collaborating institution or country one credit for its participation in an article. This method is generally used for coauthorship data.
