![]() In this review, I focus on the book’s claim about generalizability, namely that UMETRICS is a “novel template that the science of science policy community can use to assess the impact and value of research that extends to other scientific fields.” In good part, the book justifies this claim. These include the increasingly targeted character of federal support of food safety research trends away from smaller, less costly, single-investigator-driven work to larger, more expensive multidisciplinary projects and overall declines in real levels of research support. Additionally, interspersed throughout the book’s opening and concluding descriptive chapters are salient observations that connect its methodology and findings to a range of contemporary science policy trends of relevance both to food safety R&D and a swath of federal research investment decisions. As such, it presents a multidimensional array of findings relevant to decisions about the funding and assessment of food safety research, the future supply and competencies of the field’s labor force, and prospective career and employment opportunities for students enrolling in graduate studies in related disciplines. The food safety case study is a collaborative undertaking, with individual chapters authored by interdisciplinary teams of experts on the subject matter as well as on statistics, information science, and other areas as needed. The UMETRICS platform is a conceptually and technically innovative approach for obtaining, refining, and integrating heterogeneous data sets that can be used to better inform decisions relating to the level, apportionment, human capital needs, and physical facility requirements of public investments in research and development (R&D) and the impacts or returns that these investments have on policy objectives. The case study showcases the analytical and empirical prowess of a new data platform called UMETRICS (Universities: Measuring the Impacts of Research on Innovation, Competitiveness, and Science). The book offers a case study of government support of academic research on food safety, mainly by the US Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Measuring the Economic Value of Research is an important book, edited by a distinguished group of researchers who focus on the science of science policy, an emerging interdisciplinary approach to evaluating the scientific enterprise.
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