nihexporter: an R package for NIH funding data

Abstract

11.1 MotivationThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the major source of federal funding for biomedical research in the United States. Analysis of past and current NIH funding can illustrate funding trends and identify productive research topics, but these analyses are conducted ad hoc by the institutes themselves and only provide a small glimpse of the available data. The NIH provides free access to funding data via NIH EXPORTER, but no tools have been developed to enable analysis of this data.\n\n1.2 ResultsWe developed the nihexporter R package, which provides access to NIH EXPORTER data. We used the package to develop several analysis vignettes that show funding trends across NIH institutes over 15 years and highlight differences in how institutes change their funding profiles. Investigators and institutions can use the package to perform self-studies of their own NIH funding.\n\n1.3 AvailabilityThe nihexporter R package can be installed via github.\n\n1.4 ImplementationThe nihexporter package is implemented in the R Statistical Computing Environment.\n\n1.5 ContactJay Hesselberth jay.hesselberth@gmail.com, University of Colorado School of Medicine