In response to a request, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided the indirect cost rates it negotiated for some 800 institutions, including 478 higher-education institutions, 98 hospitals and 216 non-profit research institutions for 2012 and 2013.

These were combined. Clear duplications were removed,instances in which some numbers or locales differed were flagged for follow up (see lists).To find the actual rate being paid by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), data were collected from the Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORTER), an online repository of money granted by the NIH. Data on awards by location ( collected for 2013.

Using Python scripts, institution names were matched between the two databases, accounting for duplicates and discrepancies in naming conventions. Direct funding, indirect funding and total funding were totalled for any institution found in RePORTER data that had a match in the data provided by the HHS and the data were merged. For detailed description and code, see

The calculated indirect-cost rate for a given institution is the total indirect funds divided by the total of direct funds and expressed as a percentage. Grants that did not show indirect or direct costs were not included in this calculation. Some grants have no associated indirect costs or are not required to report them in the same way. These do not represent a large proportion of money awarded to most institutions.

Where data on negotiated rates were only available for 2012, that figure was used as a stand-in for the negotiated rate in 2013, and the discrepancy noted (see list). 2013 funding figures for the Boston Biomedical Research Institute were unavailable, so figures from 2012 were used. Data were collected and entered for Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which negotiate their rates with the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) rather than with the HHS. For duplications with significant differences in the negotiated rate, the higher rate was chosen. For close differences, the rate was rounded to the nearest whole integer.Finally, any institution missing too much data to provide meaningful context was deleted, as were obvious outliers, which we could confirm as having erroneous data (see list).

The resulting table can be found at go.nature.com/hGrK8a

Acknowledgements: Heidi Ledford, Chris Ryan, Eric Hand, Brendan Maher

List

DEDUPING

  • Deleted Universityof Pennsylvania Lock Haven:clearly referred to Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, for which no RePORTER data exists from 2013.
  • Deleted copy of Alcorn State that had negotiated rate of 35.5;left the one with a higher rate, of 38.
  • Deletedexact copy of American College of Radiology
  • Deleted copy of American Society for Cell Biology that had slightly lower rate
  • Deleted one copy of Bluefield State College; left the one with 64, rounding down from 64.2
  • Deleted both versions of Montgomery College (data conflicted, and we had incomplete funding figures from RePORTER)
  • Deleted exact copy of Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
  • Deleted exact copy of University of Massachusetts, Boston.
  • Deleted Yeshiva University; added note to Albert Einstein Colledge of Medicine (Yeshiva University)

DEALING WITH MISSING FY2013 FIGURES

For institutions with a number reported for 2012 AND figures in indirect-cost column, I used the figure for 2012 and made a note (negotiated rate from FY 2012)

Deleted entries that contained no FY2013 and no funding figures, including:

Ecohealth Alliance

Foundation For Blood Research

Immune Disease Institute

Lawrence University

Ordway Research Institute

Steward Research/Specialty Projects Corp

Switched University of Missouri Columbia from Other to Higher Ed

Deleted Houston Academy of Med — Texas Med Ctr Lib (too few data)

OTHERS

  • Added figures for MIT; added note for MIT and Stanford that rates were negotiated with ONR.
  • Changed all zeros to ‘Not available’
  • Removed IIT Research institution because it became clear that the number we had for negotiated rate was incorrect.
  • Pasted 2012 figures for Boston Biomedical Research Institute, which went bankrupt in 2013 and made a note.