Industry funding of academic research
Industry funding of academic research in the United States is one of the two major sources of research funding in academia along with government support. Currently, private funding of research accounts for the majority of all research and development funding in the United States as of 2007 overall. Overall, Federal and Industrial sources contribute similar amounts to research, while industry funds the vast majority of development work.While the majority of industry research is performed in-house, a major portion of this private research funding is directed to research in non-profit academic centers. As of 1999, industrial sources accounted for an estimated $2.2 billion of academic research funding in the US. However, there is little governmental oversight or tracking of industry funding on academic science and figures of the scale of industry research are often estimated by self-reporting and surveys which can be somewhat unreliable.