This report contains data on the budget authority provided to U.S. federal agencies to fund the research and development and R&D plant components of their programs in FYs 2015–17. Budget authority is the primary source of legal authorization to enter into obligations that will result in outlays. It is most commonly granted in the form of appropriations by the congressional committees assigned to determine the budget for each function.

The data tables in this report are a statistical supplement to the recent InfoBrief authored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) (https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2017/nsf17304/), and the technical notes in this report cover the main features of the new R&D budget authority data.