COSSA provides a wealth of information to help social scientists follow the changing landscape of rules and resources at the federal agencies that fund social science research, as the government responds to the COVID-19 pandemic.
See the highlights of the current issue below, and subscribe to the COSSA Washington Update to stay abreast this of fast-changing context.
On May 17, the House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year (FY) 2019 Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) Appropriations Bill. The CJS bill serves as the vehicle for annual appropriations for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Census Bureau, National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and many other federal departments and agencies. The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has shared its analysis of the key spending provisions in this important bill.
According to COSSA's analysis, the House CJS bill increases funding for the NSF, NIJ and Census budgets over FY18 enacted levels, and holds the budget for the Econmomic and Statistics Administration level, The Senate has not yet released the details of its CJS bill.
This week, the federal agencies regulated under the Common Rule, the set of regulations governing human subjects research, released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would delay implementation of revisions to the Common Rule by an additional six months, setting a new compliance date of January 21, 2019. The stated rationale for the delay is to “provide additional time to regulated entities for the preparations necessary to implement the 2018 Requirements.” The Obama-era changes had been originally scheduled to go into effect on January 19, 2018 but were delayed by an Interim Final Rule announced in January 2018 that pushed the compliance date by six months, to July 19, 2018, and indicated that further delays might be proposed. The rulemaking process to update the Common Rule has been in progress since 2011 (read COSSA’s summary of the changes). The regulations themselves have not been updated since 1991.
ISSR calls your attention to the details, of the President's FY 2019 Budget Request, newly analyzed by the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA). COSSA reports that, revisions to the President's initial budget request restore much of its proposed 30% cut to the National Science Foundation. While the new proposal restores overall NSF funding the enacted FY2017 levels, it disproportionately reduces allocations to the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate. In the revised request, SBE would see a cut of 9.1 percent from FY2017 (11.2 percent to its research an education activities). See COSSA's detailed analysis of the President's FY2019 Budget Request for the National Science Foundation.
The Consortium of Social Science Associations in Washington (COSSA) has been reporting their analysis of debates in Washington over the federal government budget. In a letter to ISSR and other members this week, COSSA builds on analysis of the Trump Administration's "skinny budget" with some highlights of the President's full FY18 budget request.
Why Social Science? is a space to talk about the unique contributions the social and behavioral sciences have made to making our society better and improving the lives of people around the world. The upcoming March for Science brings the opportunity to join with fellow scientists, researchers, and supporters from across fields, disciplines, professions, and industries to focus on Why Science—all science—is such a fundamental driver of human progress around the world.
The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has published its analysis of where things stand on the annual appropriations bills that authorize federal spending on social science research, as the U.S. Congress goes into its summer recess. Read the details, agency-by-agency, in the full analysis here.
